Myxine - What the Hell Is That ?
by shadow-walker12
Summary: When Henry and Vicki have solved the case of the disappearing male models and Henry is still fighting with his emotional state in relation to Mike Celluci, he d like some peace. But not so, if your new girl friend is Vicki Nelson! An unknown anything is haunting Lake Ontario and Toronto and Henry finds himself confronted with more than vampire trouble. Rating M for adult content
1. Chapter 1

**Myxine- What the hell is that...?**

**Disclaimer: **All characters belong to Tanya Huff and the writers of the show Blood Ties. I own nothing and I´m writing just for fun, as I´m making no money with it...

_When Henry and Vicki have solved the case of the disappearing male models and Henry is still fighting with his emotional state in relation to Mike Celluci, he´d like some peace. But not so, if your new girl friend is Vicki Nelson! An unknown anything is haunting Lake Ontario and Toronto and Henry finds himself confronted with more than vampire trouble..._

**_Chapter 1_ **

**A night at Lake Ontario**

The night was dark, without any moonlight, and the walls of the gillnet deep under the surface of the Lake Ontario were an impenetrable wall for the fishes in it. They were circling in the wide prison, its opening lying anywhere in the impervious darkness of the water, that was black as the night. The swarm of the salmons had been trapped and their final fate was uncertain. Either they would be ending up in a smokehouse or they would spent a part of their life in a fish nursery, where their progeny would be nurtured to finally end up on the menu...

The fishes were swimming calmer now and slowly the hectic tightness of the swarm was dissolving, when the salmons slowly calmed down. The behavior of the leaders were showing them, that there seemed to be no danger in the moment and the salmons were spreading into the width and depth inside the widely arranged net.

For approximatey one hour everything stayed calm, then the leading salmons became nervous. Anything was wrong. Unfortunately they couldn´t localize, what was happening outside the net. Only a hint of danger that turned into panic, when suddenly there was a large opening in the net´s wall where none had been before. The leading fishes turned around, shooting into the direction of the swarm, positively rounding up the members of the swarm. For a mere second there was chaos in the pitch black water, then the chaos got structured into a compact mass of circling bodies and the fishes were speeding up, when they started to circle in a fin on fin formation.

A proven behavior to complicate it for a predator to target a prey, because the fast and tightly swimming mass of bodies made it more difficult to catch a single fish from the swarm.

Normally.

But not tonight...

The pitch black water turned white, when anything made it foaming. Liquid water was turning into something, what humans called glue. No salmon ever had seen anything like this and there was no time left to find out what this strange, sticking mass might be, before a mouth full of sharp fangs opened up in front of them, which was framed by a bunch of long tentacles.

The hungry anything of a predator, that looked like from outer space, was filling up what one might define as a stomach. Then it disappeared again into the black width of the Lake Ontario. So fast and invisible as it had been appearing out of nowhere...

"Damn! I have had a real great catch in the net yesterday afternoon!" The fisherman was cursing when he looked down into the water over the railing of his boat. The motor winch had pulled up the net, so that the salmons in it got pressed together to a tight swarm. The man was directing onto the water´s surface.

"That had been at least one thousand salmons! All some two feet long! That would have brought me some thirty bucks each! And now? Look at this shit! At least the half of them is gone and look at this friggin giant hole in the net and then...urggh..." he grimaced with disgust when his work gloves became white with any slime...

That shit was sticking like hell, worse than any tumbled over pot of wallpaper paste.

"I´m fishing in Lake Ontario since 25 years, but never got into such snafu...!" He pulled his hands apart, but the sticky mass was dragging on and on, extending to long fibers and he started to whirl around his arms, in an attempt to get rid of it again. To throw his gloves overboard was no reasonable option.

"Do you think, any badass of a polluter has dumped anything into the lake...? Any chemicals, which creates this crap in contact with the water?" one of his colleagues meant.

"And this bites such a giant hole into my net!? Stop kidding! That damn hole looks like any mill had done this! Most likely any idiot has driven into my net with his ship...though the lit buoys! Get my hands on his dump ass and I would..." He hit his fist onto the railing.

"But the hole in the net is in a position, that is lying way too deep under the surface for any screw, Jack!"

"Than it had been the fucking Navy! These idiots have been driving their damn submarine into my net! I´ll sue the damn Canadian Navy for damage! I´m making a loss of at least five thousand bucks right here! There aren´t more than some four or five hundred salmons left in the net! Half the catch..." he clicked his fingers, "Beat it!" Jack, the fisherman cursed.

"And all of this slimy glue? Wherefrom shall this come, Jack?"

"Who knows? Probably they are testing a new secret weapon! Stuff like that the cops shoot at people! Spider Man from the gun!"

Angrily he started, together with his companions, to winch up the remaining salmons onto the deck, where they slipped into large tubs. Then he would have to stay off fishing for at least two days, until the company in the harbor of Toronto would have repaired his net.

Two hours later an angry Jack beat down the receiver, when the officer of the Naval Station explained him, that there hadn´t been any of their submarines in the Lake Ontario.

"Turn to the police, probably they will help you on! Probably any yacht owner didn´t care about the rules on the lake!"

"Real good idea! Guess you dunno how many private boats are bobbing up and down outta there...! Have to be hundreds! And then try to get your hands onto this idiot who rips my net to pieces!" Jack cursed.

His second frustration bit his butt when he drove into the company, the net on his pick-up. Kindly they tried to explain him, that he might have to wait four days instead of two, because a lot of fisherman had brought in their nets for repair with large holes.

"I´m sorry, Mr. Donald. But we are suffocating with orders! In the moment we don´t have hands enough, to get these repairs done fast! You´ll have to wait..." the boss of the company explained to him.

What the hell was going on out there on the Lake Ontario?

Vicki Nelson investigations

Vicki leaned her head against the backrest of her chair, her feet were covered by thick socks and a cup of tea was standing in front of her. Outside it had become pretty cold. She had put up her feet into the chair, her knees bent.

Henry sat down onto the couch beside her. He slightly smiled.

"Got cold feet, Vicki? I might, if you like..."

Vicki bent back her head, looking at Henry with knitted brows. He recognized her typical, skeptical Vicki view, which he knew all too good.

"You might pour me another cup of tea, you wanted to tell me for sure..." she began.

"That too." Henry testified and his view didn´t turn from her face. "Low body temperature." he directed onto her thick socks.

"You´re gonna drink blood when you are in need to warm up!" Vicki grinned.

"Vicki, I don´t drink blood to warm up, but cuz it´s my...nourishment...!" he softly corrected her.

"But your skin temperature...is higher after you´ve fed..." she replied.

"A side effect. Not the main reason. Otherwise I would have to drink much more, as I do. I drink merely more than half a liter each night. Probably also every second night only."

"Mike might have quite a different opinion about that, Henry! Remember it. In the church; We might have to talk about your feeding habits!" Vicki was extending the point now consciously.

"Vicki! Please! This had been an...exceptional situation, which I don´t like to remind! And Detective Celluci hadn´t been that innocent..." Henry replied a bit grumpily.

After all it had been the detective, who had delivered him to this lunatic, although when he had realized his mistake and had tried to make good for it. The physical aftermaths had been healing completely, but Henry had to accept, that the encounter with his old enemy Mendoza had left back scars, which went way deeper. He often had been hunted throughout the centuries, but this inquisitor had been a special opponent. He has had enemies. But rarely he had been confronted by such hatred as by this man. And this with a man you called himself a man of the church.

An insult for the deep faith, which Henry had kept all over the time. But there were just people in the church and coincidentally he knew a couple of them.

"What did Mike want from you, Vicki? Why did he call...?"

"I don´t know yet..." Vicki shrugged her shoulders. "He´ll call back later on..."

"Vicki, I know that you had been part of the troupe earlier and that both of you obviously had been quite successful..."

"Quite successful actually, Henry!" she corrected him.

"Quite! Okay! Just what I wanna say...I would prefer it, when you...uhm, how shall I express it...?"

"Be my guest, Henry! I can understood pretty well that you´re pissed off by Mike. Anyway he had..."

"Pissed off...doesn´t hit the point exactly, Victoria..." his voice was slightly frosty and the _Victoria_ was showing her, that he wasn´t up for a joke when he looked at her now. "if it had only been for confronting me with an enemy; he wouldn´t have been the first one! That also happened to me in the past..."

"The farmers with muckrakes and torches!" Vicki replied airily.

"Vicki, please! That isn´t funny at all! There had been things happening, which...went deeper than superficial wounds only, two broken ribs and bruises..." his voice became lower. Thoughtfully.

Loss of control. Rage. Revenge. He almost had killed Vicki. And Mike.

Vicki felt a knot in her throat and swallowed hard, when the images returned in front of her inner eye, which she had seen in the poorly lit, dirty cellar of the abandoned church. Vigorously she shook them off.

"Henry, I´m understanding you! Also when it doesn´t...look like that..." she tried now. Vicki was aware that she often could be very gruffly, when somebody didn´t know her good enough. And Henry was so old, that he probably had read her like a book a long time ago, also when she didn´t like this imagination. But with him it would be easier to talk about than with Mike.

"What I wanna say: I´d prefer it when you would be somewhat more reserved with your cooperation with Detective Celluci within the next time. I can quite help you too..." Henry carefully began.

"You aren´t in the Police and now and then I´m in need of information which only Mike can give me. So I can´t neglect him completely, Henry..." she admonished him.

"I know. I only wanted to beg you..." Henry was aware, that he was testing uncertain waters.

The door bell rang.

Henry stopped, scurried for the door, listening. He put his hand onto his chest, then lifted his hand while turning to Vicki. He stretched one finger into the air and his lips silently formed the words _One person_. Vicki nodded with understanding, getting up from her chair and went for the door to open it. Henry scurried back to his place on the couch.

"Good evening! I hope that I won´t disturb...Ms. Nelson? That´s Nelson Investigations, ain´t it?" the elderly woman began who was standing in front of the door. She was wearing blue jeans, a worn out parka and fur lined booties, pushing her gray, obviously self knitted gloves into the pockets of her parka.

"You´re right in here, Mrs. …!"

"Turner. Mary Turner. I hope that you´ll be able to help me. The police can,t, Ms. Nelson."

"Please sit down. Then I´ll listen what´s up at least. I know that the police is often fast with a No!" Vicki directed to a seat in front of her desk.

"I still have been on the police station, but they said that this is none of their business. I shall turn to the animal protection, as long as I won´t have any evidence that anybody kidnapped my cat..." Mrs, Turner began.

"Mrs. Turner, I´m not quite sure if I´m the right contact person for you when your cat is missing. From time to time I´m searching for missing humans." Vicki thought back at the case of the missing male model, the young man who had fallen in love with the wrong woman: a Medusa.

And whose...fragments...were lying in the woods. Buried.

"Lucille is no stray. She´s living in my house, walking in the garden at night and a bit in the surrounding areas, then she´ll be back at the door in the morning. That she does since years and...never she had gone lost anyway or did bang around."

"Mrs. Turner, maybe Lucille had found an interest in any tomcat. Cats then stay off one or two days with the tomcat, when he appeals to her..." Vicki gave her point of view.

"Ms. Nelson, Lucille got neutered and she isn´t in tomcats usually. She...beats them off." she defended her cat.

"Looks anyway familiar to me..." Henry mumbled from his place onto the couch. Mrs. Turner looked over to him in some astonishment.

"My partner in the investigation business." she directed over to Henry. "Mr. Fitzroy" With that the theme _Henry_ had been done.

"So your cat isn´t in tomcats. So far, so good. Since when are you missing your cat?"

"since two days. I had been at the police but they told me that missing cats are not under their responsibility. And my neighbor´s dog is missing too! And the dog is leaving the garden only on the leash. When Ms. Amelsen takes her dog for a walk."

Are any other pets missing in your area?" Vicki asked with some sudden interest.

"Mr. Paddington´s koi-carps are gone too! Three days ago his pond was empty...suddenly, although his fishes are going into hibernation now and the pond is secured by a lattice, cuz of the depth and because of the children in the neighborhood. And he has told me that the lattice was completely twisted and wrenched from the socket. Ms. Nelson! Anybody is assaulting our beloved pets!" Mrs. Turner complained.

Now Henry had gotten up from his seat and had been coming into the office. He was leaning at the wall behind Vicki.

"The whosoever seems to act rather haphazardly..." Henry threw in now. "Normally, if anybody is stealing animals he turns his interest on one species. And doesn´t steal randomly everything crisscross. And koi-carps are rather large and expensive fishes. Those you won´t simply put into your pocket. Fishes are very sensitive..."

"Henry...!"

"I´m only indicating the randomness of a potential criminal..." Henry replied.

Vicki was nodding.

"Are there any traces or indications who might be the kidnapper...or thief?"

"Which is anyway the same when it comes to the theft of animals. As humans are kidnapped...mostly for money. But animals are stolen." Henry gave back with a shrug and he got a critical view from Vicki for it.

"Animals can be kidnapped too to get money for them. Either for selling them over to a laboratory for example or to sell them back to their owners. And as you so eloquently put it, Henry: koi-carps are very expensive!"

"Mr. Paddington bought one of them for some two thousand dollars!" Mrs. Turner hastily explained in an attempt to convince Vicki in taking up on this mysterious case of disappearing animals.

"Two thousand bucks?! Oh my! Really an expensive meal!"

"Vicki!"

"Ms. Nelson!" the protest was coming out of two throats at the same time.

"Sorry...sorry..." Vicki throw her hands up in a desperate gesture. "Fishes are mostly part of a meal for me. Like salmon, carp or herring...I never kept fishes in a pond or tank. Better for them as I don´t have a "fish thumb"..." Vicki meant in relation to the so called "green thumb" Time to switch back to the case.

"So...any traces...?" Vicki tried to get the talk back on some reasonable level she might work with. Finally she was a former police detective.

"I almost slipped in front of the door when I searched for Lucille..."

"Slipped? Slipped on what? Ice?" It was very cold outside and snow had fallen in Toronto, which wasn´t that uncommon in November.

"No! It hadn´t been ice. Any white, sticking stuff. I thought that the son of my neighbor had joked around with wallpaper paste. The stuff looked like that! I used my pocket lamp to look for. That stuff went from my door to the street..."

"To where exactly on the street?" Vicki asked.

"Down to the gully.."

"What kinda gully? Waste water? Rainwater?" Vicki asked.

"I think it´s rainwater...why do you ask?"

"Because...as far as I know...in your quarter the rainwater channels are ending in the Lake Ontario. Probably the perp came from the water site, having a boat down there..." Vicki was speculating.

"Vicki!" Henry warned her. He definitely felt not the slightest interest to investigate the sewers of Toronto personally again. The last time they had done this, they had met a Windigo. And he hadn´t come off well from that...

"Can we get a look on that stuff, that paste, as you call it...?" Vicki asked now.

"I´ve cleaned up the entrance and the sidewalk. When anything still sticks on the gully? That had been a hell of a mess, until I got rid of it...Sticks like hell...this you can believe me!"

"Please give me your address, I´ll take a look on it. Possibly anybody from the neighborhood knows anything about too..."

"Vicki, I don´t want to travel the sewers again. You know, why...!" Henry warned her about in an attempt to low down her eagerness.

"Henry, that won´t get that bad like the last time, I promise you!" Vicki smiled.

"Let´s hope so, by goodness!" Henry mumbled and he didn´t sound as if being convinced.

Vicki wrote down the address which Mrs. Turner gave her.

"When may you come over, Ms. Nelson? It´s...it´s very important for me. If probably anything happens to Lucille outside...?! She isn´t the youngest one anymore...and a bit too trustful with strangers. I´m so much concerned...!" Mrs. Turner looked at Vicki with a beseechingly view.

Vicki looked onto her watch. It was late, but for Henry it was still early. Probably he had grabbed a nosh, shortly after getting out of the bed. Grabbed...shoved between the teeth...pardon...between the fangs..., Vicki thought and an unintended smile escaped from her face, which naturally didn´t escape Henry.

"What are you thinking about, Vicki?" he whispered in a friendly tone and his face wore an expression of amusement.

So he didn´t take the earlier exchange of opinions the wrong way, Vicki thought with some relief.

"Uhm, I only had supper in mind..." she mumbled in a low voice.

"Supper? Are you hungry?" Henry shot her a doubtful look because Vicki never had been very interested in eating, once she got her hands on a case. Often enough he has had to put some soft pressure on Vicki to get her eating, so that she won´t fall off the bar. Vicki noticed that she had brought herself into a stuck situation.

"I´ve had eaten, Henry. How´s about you? She asked righteous to get the point to a closure.

"Thanks for asking! I´ve had a small meal tonight, so there´s nothing to say against a departure now, just in case you want..."

"Good! So let´s go! Mrs. Turner, do want to drive with us? So we might be there a bit faster..." Vicki suggested. Henry looked at her, then down onto his boots. His view hiding nothing.

"Is there any problem, Henry?" I thought, you´re sated...first of all." she bent deeper to his ear; "...or are you afraid that Mrs. Turner might stain your Jag with slime...?" Her voice had gone down to a whisper.

"No. Not about her...only...I just bought these new booties. Guess, you know when..." And to wade through slime with them...this imagination drove a cold shudder down his spine.

Vicki looked down onto his brand-new boots. The old ones had gone down into the garbage can when he had been rescued from the cellar. First the sewer, than the remains of the Windigo and finally Mendoza. Although the boots had protected his ankles from abrasions, they had come in contact with things Henry wouldn´t like to be confronted with again. Sweat, blood...

"I have an additional pair of Wellingtons here, which might fit for you..." she looked down onto his feet. Because Henry was only some 4" taller than her, he won´t get any problems.

"You´re having everything double on stock, ain´t you...?"

"Like my glasses."

"What else?" he smirked.

"You´ll see. All in due time!" Vicki opened her closet and reached him a pair of rubber boots, which he took when they left the office.

The drive through Downtown Toronto, down to the housing area at Lake Ontario needed more time, though Mrs. Turner was leading them, because once again the sky above Toronto had decided to paint the city white . Canadians were used to drive on snow, but they weren´t such idiots to drive with a lead foot. At least winter tires were obligate. Not like in other countries where every snowflake was leading into inevitably traffic chaos, because the cars were sliding into the ditch, blocking the crossroads and then were unable to drive on again...

**Toronto Metropolitan Police- Mike´s office**

Mike was digging through his tousled, blonde hair. The open file in front of him was growing thicker with every day. Dave bent over him and shook his head.

"Crowley is upside down under the ceiling with this case! But we can´t change it, the hard we ever try..." Dave commented the situation.

"Instead of getting this case solved...that damn file is filling up every day I´m putting my hands on it..." Mike groaned.

"Not exactly a good omen, Mike...looks like this case isn´t friends with you." Dave confidentially padded his shoulder in an attempt to give Mike some comfort.

"I won´t wonder if I´ll find out, that Vicki has her fingers in it also...together with her new partner! That case is just after her fancy. I won´t wonder when she would show up soon, presenting me a new abstruse explanation, how and why some badass uses a damn spreader to break the chest of this poor dude, crunching his heart and pulling his intestines out to drape them on a plate, crowned by the separated head. Not before he has stuck the eyes into the victims mouth..."

"That´s pretty disgusting, Mike! What about some ritual murder...? Two years ago, down in New Orleans, they found a whole cellar full of human remains which were piled up ornamentally... It had something to do with a Voodoo priest..."

Mike gave a deep groan and rolled his eyes in despair at Dave´s suggestion. The last thing he ever needed since his...encounter...with a certain man...vampire...in a cellar, was more of that paranormal shit. Superstition, vampires, Voodoo, zombies and any other...species...of the undead...thanks, no! He just had gotten an overdose of it, enough for the next decade...or way better: enough for the rest of his life. Mortal life! And Mike felt no intention to change this anytime. Not, that Fitzroy would come up with the idea to...to turn him anytime! How the hell does that work really? Biting, sucking until he would die and then turn him with vampire blood? Fitzroy had bitten him, had sucked his blood and he had been lying on the cold, dirty tiles of the cellar. Unconscious. Dying...?

Mike´s face became a bit paler and in a reflex he grabbed for his neck, his fingers were feeling for the scar that was still there...the scar where Fitzroy had ravaged his throat in blind hunger.

Undead?

What, if he was immortal now? His heart sped up for a moment and the office walls seemed to jump off, fading. He gasped for air. Then his mind won back controls. He had been outside...at daytime! If Fitzroy would have turned him, he would be ashes now!

The gasp of relief which Mike gave off, made Dave look at him in some astonishment. But Dave took it for a breath of relief in the view of this ugly case. Mike thankfully registered it, that Dave didn´t get it what was the real reason for his tension. He closed the file and was about to get himself a coffee. The shift wasn´t over yet and even so...how often were they hanging around in the office for hours after end of shift?

He got up from his seat, left the office and went down the hallway, where a vending machine was placed. Mike got his urgently needed coffee and with cup in hand, he went back into his office. When he opened the door, a man was sitting opposite his desk. Mike shot him a skeptical look. Dave was still in the office, so no violation of rules. As a person wasn´t allowed to enter an office all alone. When Mike came in, Dave shot him a grin.

"Mr. Stone is waiting for you, Mike..."

"Guess so!" Mike grunted and sat down at his desk.

A man in his mid-fifties was sitting in front of him. He had the weathered face of a human, who had spent most of his lifetime on the sea, being exposed to wind, weather and sunlight.

"Mr. Stone, I don´t know who has sent you to me into the homicide department..." Mike meant. He sipped at his hot coffee. At least the coffee that came out of the machine, was hot in difference to that, which was waiting hours in the pot on the coffee maker...

"Those dudes down on the Naval Station told me that I should contact the police. And your colleague...she has sent me into your office..."

"Detective Lam? What reason did you give her, that I shall talk with you? A case of murder?"

"Murder? Uhm, ehm...not directly..." Mr. Stone mumbled.

"Indirect murder? Guess, you´re meaning suicide, ain´t you?" Mike was staring at him, his cerulean eyes were inquiring, penetrating.

"Suicide? No. But anybody has destroyed my net and all my salmons, at least half of them are..."

"Your net got destroyed? Mr. Stone, that´s a case of property damage. And salmons are objects at law, there´s no murder... At the utmost it´s cruelty to animals when you let them peg out on your deck..." Mike replied.

"Detective! I´m a fisherman since more than twenty five years. I´m handling my catch livestock-friendly!" Mr. Stone was looking at him angrily.

"Okay, I didn´t deny this, Mr. Stone! But damage of property...that´s business of another department..."

"Detective..." he looked onto the batch, that Mike wore on his chest. "Detective Celluci...anybody or _anything_ has ripped my net to pieces and half of my catch is gone and some of the fishes are looking rather strange. Dead and like anything has rasped off skin and meat..." Mr. Stone explained with a more intensive voice.

"_Anything_?" Mike shot him a skeptical look. "Anything? What shall this mean? And when you´re having dead and as you call it...rasped fishes in your net, then it´s the question, where from do these unusual injuries come? So far...so good! But that´s something for the Department of fishery science and aquaculture!" Mike came something in mind like a large catfish. And that was definitely a case for the Department for fishery. These guys were caring about fish stock and species control.

"Other fishermen are having the same problems within the last time, Detective!" Mr. Stone tried it again.

"Then you should all together go to the DoF down at the harbor. There you shall find any better help, Mr. Stone. I´m investigating cases of murder and suicide. Dead salmons are none of my business, I´m sorry, Mr. Stone...!"

Mike had gotten up from his seat and with an apologetic smile, he directed to the door of his office.

"For you...at first a fisherman will have to get rasped and die!" Mr. Stone grunted.

"Then it would be some of my business, indeed...Good night, Mr. Stone." Mike tried to keep a friendly tone.

"Good night, Detective!" Mr. Jack Stone grabbed his jacket and left the office.

Mike sank back onto his seat with a moan, gulping down the rest of his coffee.

Some people´s trust into the responsibility of the police was unlimited, he thought and shook his head.

**Lake Ontario**

Henry stopped his Jaguar in front front of a house in the Hammersmith Avenue. The street was lying in the east of Toronto and was running directly down to the Lake Ontario. Small houses were lining the road side by side and between them were narrow alleyways, which went to their backyards.

Henry watched into one of the dark, narrow passage.

"Do you have a garden over there, Mrs. Turner?" he directed into the alleyway.

"Yeap. It isn´t a large one but Lucille goes with it. She makes her walks in the neighborhood and I...I can´t imagine where she...could have gone lost. The neighbors know her. None of them would do my little sweetheart any harm, believe me!" her voice was trembling and Henry could hear her heart beating faster.

"Okay, let´s check the whole surroundings..." Vicki suggested and Mrs. Turner was leading them I to the area behind her house.

"Kitty, hello kitty...Lucille! Sweetheart, sharpen your little, fluffy ears!" Vicki tried to lure the cat when she was searching through the garden with her Mag Lite in hand. Henry was standing behind her. He didn´t need any lamp, on the contrary...the focused light was more a hindrance than any help for his night-time adapted vampire eyes. But because of her RP Vicki preferred as much light as possible.

"I don´t know if she´ll react to you, Vicki!" he whispered.

"Do you hear anything, Henry? You know: bumm bumm! Bumm bumm!" she directed to her heart.

Henry shook his head no, listening with utter concentration, his eyes were searching through the darkness behind the dancing beam of light.

"Nothing to hear but..."

"Two pairing rats...?"

"A mouse under the cover of snow. That would be just right now for a polar fox." Henry smirked. "But no cat. I´m sorry!" He deeply inhaled the cold air, his nostrils widening. Shaking of the head. "Old cat urine under the snow. Not fresh..."

"That isn´t good, Detective Fitzroy!" Vicki replied; "...can you smell anything else? Humans? A predator? Anything that might have left over that...paste?" she whispered.

"Vicki, just as you´re asking: it´s smelling of humans here everywhere! We are in a housing area!" Henry gave back in a very low voice.

"And I thought that your vampire nose may bring us forward..." Vicki grunted and Henry could hear the disappointment under it.

"Vicki, I´m no dog and even when my sense of smelling is way finer than yours...back here´s nothing that may be any improvement now. I´m sorry, Vicki." Henry laid a hand on Vicki´s shoulder, softly leading her back to the house. He knew her handicapped eyes all too well, but it was difficult to give Vicki a helping hand without Vicki finding it somewhat offending. She was really great at hiding her problems, even from him! Henry had found out that all discussions about her eyes problems were ending up in an angry Vicki.. So had decided to handle it on a low level which she could cope with. Give some help without her knowing it, this had become a rule for him.

"Maybe we should search in front of the house, on the street, Mrs. Turner. You´ve said that at the front this stuff went to the gully..." Vicki began.

"Yes, I have scrubbed like mad! That has stuck like hell, I thought that I won´t get rid of it..." Mrs. Turner led Vicki and Henry back to the street and to the opening in the curb, that was leading into the rainwater drain.

Vicki checked the opening thoroughly, for what she had to kneel down into the snow.

Henry was standing behind her. "And...?"

"I can´t see much from up here! One might go down there..." she meant when she rose from her knees again.

"You cannot be earnest, Vicki!" Henry sounded...disgusted. Vicki shot him a look full of incomprehension.

"Where have your flair and your hunting instinct gone to, Henry?"

"My hunting instinct you´re referring to, isn´t focusing on little, slippery animals in the sewer. Or large hairy ones!" He was staring at her and in his face she read the word Windigo. When hunting the Windigo, after all Henry had come in physical contact with the contents of the sewer when he had to avoid the electric bolt, which should kill the monster.

Vicki shook her head and then turned over to Mrs. Turner; "Do you know where we´ll find a usable entrance to the drain system? Where do the maintenance workers go?"

"I...uhm...down at the beach, there´s an entrance which is used for maintenance, but I guess, it´s locked. That´s reasonable. In the past it had been open, but there have always children slipped in and the parents got all excited about it!"

"Understandable when afterward one smells of old pond!" Henry commented on his own experiences. "Apropos pond! You mentioned that someone got lost of all his precious pond fishes, Mrs. Tuner..." Henry tried to get the point onto something less unappetizingly. A pond could be inspected from above!

Mrs. Turner was nodding. "Yeap! Mr. Paddington´s koi carps. He lives three houses ahead..." she directed up the street.

"Then I´ll look if Mr. Paddington is at home and we might look at his pond. Probably there will be any indication of the perp!" Henry suggested and Vicki nodded.

"Okay, so let´s visit Mr. Paddington first"

"And next in the row will be the owner of the dog which disappeared!" Henry added. He wanted to save the sewer option for the end, just in case that their interrogation won´t bring up any usable information.

After some time of pressing the bell button, an elderly man opened the door finally.

"Victoria Nelson of Nelson Investigations. My partner Mr. Fitzroy." Vicki introduced them to him. "We are coming cuz of your disappeared koi carps, Mr. Paddington. Mrs. Turner has retained us to search for her cat, who has also disappeared...!"

"Come in! I wanted to go to the police tomorrow, to press charges against unknown, cuz of theft..." Mr. Paddington began.

"A case of theft? Burglary than..." Vicki looked at him with some skepticism.

"Uhm...ohm...I can barelytell the police, that a giant catfish has crawled thru my garden, broke the lattice and then has swallowed my fishes. They gonna feel for my head...!"

Vicki stared at him.

"Catfish? You have...you have seen the beast?" A first indication of an animalistic...thief.

"Catfish...hm, so anything like that. I´ve never seen such a large beast before. At least in the dark it was looking like that. Long shape, relatively light-colored and it was snaking thru the snow...First I thought it to be a large snake. You don´t have any clue, which hunks of snakes some people are keeping." He led Vicki and Henry thru his home onto his porch and then down to the pond.

"But snakes are hematocryal animals. These temperatures are way too cold for them." Vicki threw in.

"Even that exactly. That´s why I thought it to be some catfish. I couldn´t see much and then...it had been gone!" Mr. Paddington explained. "Look at this, Ms. Nelson..." he lifted the lattice which edge was twisted and suddenly Vicki noticed a white mass a bit ahead at the left edge.

"Tell me, Mr. Paddington...do you make use of silicone to fix it?"

"No! Why? There are clamps, in which the ties lock...Look!" He lifted the lattice and directed to the ground clamps.

Vicki got a pair of gloves from the pocket of her parka and protected by them, she felt over the white mass that was smeared over the edge. It was hardened and glassy. Vicki bet on anything watery, that had been frozen due to the icy temperature. She pulled her Swiss army knife from her pocket and started to scratch and to lever it off so long, until she managed it get one piece loose and she could maneuver it into a small bag which Henry held open for her. He didn´t feel any urge to come in contact with it, whatever it might be.

"Thanks! So lock it and then Dr. Mohadevan can take a look on it! Probably she´ll find out from which animal it is!"

She let run her view over the garden, moving alongside the bare bushes with her Mag Lite, which were planted at the border of the garden. Henry was watching over the other side of the garden. Suddenly he waved to her.

"Vicki, look here! That looks like a piece of fish skin..." Vicki lit it up. Henry hissed when the beam of her Mag Lite hit his eyes unintentionally.

"Sorry..." she mumbled.

A blood stained piece of scaly skin with dark and orange-colored areas had been wrapped around a branch. "Okay! Bag it, with the branch..." she ordered.

"Heaven! That´s looks like from one of my koi carps!" Mr. Paddington was directing to the differently colored parts of it. "Then this beast has fed off my fishes! Damn! Wish I would have been after it directly, then I might have gotten my hands on the damn beast!"

"That wouldn´t have been of any help for your poor fishes! And as long as we don´t know if the fish thief can become dangerous for humans too, I´d be rather careful, Mr. Paddington! Which size do you estimate for the attacker?" Vicki warned him about taking hasty actions against whatever it would be.

"Oh my goodness! Hard to say. It had been dark outside and I only got a very short look onto the fuckin´ beast. I guess...anything between six and eight feet long. It was snaking thru the snow very fast and then it disappeared into the neighborhood. Over there..." he directed into the corner where Henry had found the piece of one of the koi carps. Vicki lit over to the neighboring plot, but the freshly fallen snow had covered probable crawling traces...

"Crap! can´t see a thing! If only it hadn´t been snowing so heavily!" Vicki was cursing, but she couldn´t simply climb over the fence, to continue her search on the other side. And her RP wasn´t much of a help to define structures within the white correctly, despite the pale light that was caused by the snow.

She turned over to her partner. "Henry, can you identify anything that looks like a crawling trace?"

Henry was staring over to the neighboring plot. Even for him it wasn´t so easy to differ on unknown territory, where garden structures ended and a potential trace was beginning. His eyes were searching the area and finally the bushes to find out, if anywhere anything large had been breaking thru.

Finally he directed to a corner.

"Over there...there are a couple of broken branches; the rounded opening in the bushes. But this can be caused by any other animal too, Vicki! We can´t fix it onto our fish thief definitely from the distance..." Henry turned back to Mr. Paddington: "Do you know your neighbor? Did he see anything and has talked about it with you?"

"We are living side by side though, but Mr. Shultz is a rather introverted type. He doesn´t like to talk much with peeps..." the man answered.

"So, would you have any suspect that he´s anyway involved in the disappearing of your fishes?" Vicki now mixed in to proof the trustworthiness of his statements.

Mr. Paddington gave a negative wave.

"He? Nope! He´s only interested in TV. Once a month he mows his grass. That´s it all!" he bent nearer to Henry; "Better stay off his ground, just in case you´re understanding, Mr. private eye!"

"Okay! So Mr. Shultz isn´t much help as a witness." Henry slightly grinned at him.

"And I can´t send Mike to him for any official investigation. Not as long as we don´t have a corpse! Guess, you know pretty well, what he thinks about me and you working together...!" Vicki looked at Henry who was nodding.

"He accuses me, that I´m the reason and at the same time responsible for it, that you´re mixing up with...weird...cases over the last time. And I´m feeling no intention to feed his speculations right now..." Henry mumbled to her, so that Mr. Paddington couldn´t understand him.

"So we´re finished over here now, Henry!" Vicki put things to the point.

"Well! Shall I drive you to Dr. Mohadevan´s laboratory, then you can deliver the samples freshly..." Henry offered to her. The further investigations would depend on the results from her laboratory, because the descriptions of the attacker were kind irritating and rather vaguely. Snakes couldn´t crawl around at temperatures below 32°F and a catfish was a fish who wasn´t fond of fresh air on solid ground, Henry was resuming.

So it had to be anything else!

Hopefully not one of Astaroth´s emissaries again!

Henry sighed, he wanted to say Good bye to Mr. Paddington and wanted to go back to the car, when Vicki held him back by his arm. Her voice was terrifyingly unbiased when she said: "Get your Wellingtons from your luggage trunk, Henry! Now we´ll check the rainwater drain, once now that we´re in the area here..." The smile around the corners of her mouth did augur badly.

Henry was staring at her for a moment, in disbelief. He has had the hope that Vicki wouldn´t let become this option true.

"You cannot be serious, Vicki!" he groaned and rolled with his eyes.

"But it is! You aren´t afraid of the dark, Henry, ain´t you!?" She was smirking, bantering him about his former experiences with a certain sewer. Sometimes she could be a pain in someone´s ass. "Or shall I climb down there alone? You´ve promised me something..." she reminded him, that he had promised her to protect her.

To protect her from the forces of hell.

But who knows, with whom or what they had to do here again...

_to be continued_


	2. 2 Voyage into Uh, I do not want

**Myxine- What the hell is that...?**

_**Chapter 2**_

_Henry learns to know, that a night out with Vicki can turn into something more uncomfortable, than just being confronted with a Vicki-typical row of "taking matters in her own hands" and some cold feet in rubber boots... _

**Voyage into...Uh, I don´t want to think about what it´ll be...**

"Vicki, the gate to the sewer is certainly locked and we´ll have to get the keys from the maintenance workers, what won´t be that easy..."

"What for are there any picklocks, Henry? Like by coincidence I own some..." Vicki gave back with a smile. To own them did not mean that Vicki might have them right in her pocket just now, Henry thought. Hope dies last and when she would have to go back to her office first to get them... But who ever had been able to stop Vicki from anything, once she got started with it? To hide his thoughts from her, Henry angrily replied:

"Which you won´t try on my locks at my home! Don´t you?!" Vicki had managed it, to wheedle a set of keys out of him. They had argued about the pros and cons of Vicki having keys to his refuge. But finally she had convinced him, that she was only intending to make use of them in case he´d get into some serious trouble...like any life threatening danger and he won´t be able to open the door for her. She once had mentioned, that a sharpened sword in a vampire´s home would be a risky thing, even for someone being immortal. Decapitation would kill him...finally...like any other...mortal person too!

"If anybody would cut off my head, all you gonna need, would be a dust pan!" Henry had replied on her argument.

They said Good Bye to Mrs. Turner and Mr. Paddington and Henry reluctantly opened his luggage trunk, exchanging his brand new booties against the Wellingtons. With his gun added, he would have felt way better, but the gun was lying in his cellar compartment, well oiled and wrapped in a piece of cloth.

Any long shaped and slippery wasn´t the thing to wring the neck. Or where he would be willing to make use of his teeth for the lion-bites-mutton-dead-technique, if needed...

Down, at the lower end of the street, they found themselves on a pathway which was running along the lake shore. There weren´t much footsteps in the snow, but Henry could imagine what was going up here on a sunny summer day. Vicki was searching the area with her Mag Lite, until she finally found a low bulge at the shoreline. She lit into the direction and there was a low tunnel exit in front of them. The ground in front of it was showing, that during rainfall larger amounts of water were pouring out into the lake. By reason it was forbidden to wash the cars on the streets of Toronto, when there was used anything else but clear water for cleaning the windshields.

"This thing is hanging pretty lopsidedly..." Vicki was directing to the bar, which should normally block the access to the rainwater drain and was now hanging lopsidedly in its hings. Normally it opened inwardly and now it was plain open. Watching the lock more closely, they could see that it had been broken from the wall with brutal force and its remains were still hanging at the bar.

"Guess, someone has worked flat out really!" Vicki meant and directed to the thick metal rods of which the door wing was made.

"Uh, ain´t that good for a shoulder. I´d rather prefer a crowbar..." Henry replied, when he was reluctantly following Vicki into the entrance.

"You´re gonna break that off with two fingers, Henry!" Vicki shot back and tromped on. "So...anybody or anything had been doubtlessly in here before. And it definitely had neither a picklock nor any key."

Henry was looking into the pitch black tunnel. His heart was beating faster unintentionally when he felt and smelled the airless, clammy air.

_Steps were reverberating thru the tunnel and he was helplessly hanging at the wall, where he had sunken down. Every intake of breath, every beat of his heart was turned into an agony by the glossy thing in his chest. It felt as if every heartbeat was pumping his blood out of his body and he felt warm moisture between his shirt and his skin, where it had dug into his flesh with golden claws. The steps were approaching and then the world around him gave way when Mendoza was appearing in front of him. "Henry Fitzroy... _

His heart cramped and he had to breathe deeply, in order to force his feet to make the first steps. Vicki still was a couple of steps ahead of him and when she would turn around to him, she would look right into his tensed face, when he forced himself to follow her.

The light of her Mag Lite was jumping over the ground, the walls and the ceiling in a wide cone of light. Painting white patterns onto the glistening walls where a film of water had been frozen to a fine layer of hoar frost. It was going deeper down into the underground and Henry could see in the light of her lamp, that her breath was steaming even here.

In some distance behind the entrance a biting stench was hitting their nostrils. Henry had smelled it first with his heightened vampire nose.

"Air conditioning isn´t the thing right in here, or...? I thought that only rainwater is running along here!"

"Normally it should, unless..." he turned around, directing to the ground a bit aside and ahead of them;

"Do you see this, Vicki?"

"When I won´t see it...even I would smell it, Henry...!"

The ground was partially covered with slime, that smelled of nothing else but throw up, fermented. Mixed with a definitely stench of decay.

Vicki pulled her hand over her nose for a moment and also Henry was swallowing hard when he turned away for a moment. Then he started to inspect the strange, stinking layer more closely. The slime or paste was white and glassy, of viscous consistence and was by that equal to what Mrs. Turner had described. The stuff was piling up on some places, covering the ground and the walls up to a certain height.

"By up to where this sticking paste is reaching...we can estimate the size of our unknown fish eater. And when it´s some six to eight feet long...looks like some slug or worm, that had become too large! Like the monsters which slipped into our time by any anomaly in Primeval. Seven-feet-flatworms..." Vicki was turning her thoughts into words. Very much to the discomfort of Henry at her side.

"Flatworms?! No, not really, Vicki! I don´t wanna be hunted by anything like that!"

"Then you´d rather prefer some clean demons instead, won´t you? Somewhat picky, your highness!" Vicki smirked when Henry pulled a face of disgust.

"I´ve told you once before that I prefer to choose my fights myself..."

"I´m wondering that you made it so long to become some five hundred years this way..." Vicki was grinning impertinently. Then she went on some steps, stopping suddenly.

Anything was stuck in the greasy mass. To bent down more deeply was a costing her quite an effort. The more she was approaching, the more intense the stench of decay was growing. Vicki put on some latex gloves and carefully pulled at what she had found. With a viscous, smacking sound a small skull came out of the slime.

Vicki lifted it up in a way that adhering liquid didn´t have any chance to drip onto her boots or worse...her jeans.

"Henry...what do you think about it? Might that..." She directed the light onto it with the other hand.

Henry came to her, bending over it carefully, attempting like Vicki not to get hit by the rotting liquid when he looked closely at the small skull.

"Felis domestica. The ordinary cat. You can see it by the form and position of the canines..." he directed to the maw.

"Canines...that´s the matter you´re knowing best of all..." Vicki grinned, then her face tensed. "Do you think, that this might be Lucille...? The skeleton unfortunately doesn´t wear a necklace with a name tag..."

"I suggest that, when this cat was owned by Mrs. Turner, then for sure she had been chipped. Most pets are chipped..." he directed to more remains of bones.

Vicki´s expression changed between an ash pale and rather greenish color.

"You don´t wanna say by this, that I shall dig thru this mess, until I´ll find a damned pet chip, Henry!"

"We might obtain a scanner and search with it..." Henry suggested. Even he felt not the slightest interest to dig thru slime and animal remains for it with his hands.

"Tell me, by what do you have such knowledge about it? Is there any small quadruped on your menu now and then...?

"No pets. They won´t survive a feeding unless I´m hanging to a cow or a horse..."

"What from did you sustain on a ship in the past?"

"If you keep hidden; from rats or mice. Not even delicious, but enough for a survival."

"And what has this to do with the chip? I think, pets are running away from your kind or the are flipping out."

"My neighbor from the floor below has a Bull Mastiff. He explained the chip to me. But in my presence this male dog is somewhat...difficult...!"

"I can completely understand it! Dogs are territorial too and he smells the opponent male dog in you!"

"Thank you for the _compliment_, Vicki!" Henry was sounding a bit insulted.

"Come on! Let´s search on, so we can get out of here, before we´ll start to smell the same like that stuff in here!" Vicki recommended. After a couple of steps she found a dog´s necklace on the other side of the sewer which still had the dogtag hanging from it.

"Crap! That may..." she turned the tag, reading a name and a phone number, which was engraved on the other side; "Guess, that´s the missing dog! Our fish predator is obviously cleaning up the area with full effort; cats, dogs, a pond full of koi carps."

"And...humans."

First, Vicki thought that Henry had mentioned it only casually: humans.

But his voice didn´t sound of speculation.

"Victoria!"

Fu...! That was seriously. Vicki tensed. When he addressed her by her full first name, it was seriously. Dead serious. She whirled around and her pulse was speeding up. Her throat was suddenly constricting and her heart jumped into her throat, when she looked down onto what Henry was directing.

The skull and bones of a human and slime covered clothes in rags.

"Oh my Lord! My goodness!" she groaned horror-stricken. Her voice was strangely soundless, when she added:

"Now _it is_ a case for Mike!"

Vicki pulled out her cell, throwing a last look onto the unsavory remains of the anything-meal before she pressed the key with Mike´s saved number.

The phone rang and rang.

"Cuzzo! Mike! Take up the phone! Ain´t that nice now..." Vicki grunted under her breath. Then finally Mike answered the call.

"Detective Mike Celluci! Is that you, Vicki?"

"Yep, Mike! It´s me!" If you like it now or not, she thought.

"Ya sounding kinda strange. Anyway of reverberation...Where are you?"

"I´m in a damn rainwater drain at the East Beaches. And just you gonna know: Henry is here too!"

"Henry? Oh Henry...! Has Fitzroy switched his hunting grounds to the underground?" Mike directly started to taunt. He scratched his head, thinking about what both of them now where up to again.

"No! He´s simply joining me and we just got a John Doe down here! He looks as if any beast has rampaged him." Vicki explained with her nerves on edges.

"What kinda beast? Who rampaged whom? Or what? And at all, Vicki! Why are both of you standing beside a corpse _again_?"

"Someone hired me to investigate, why in this area pets are indiscriminately disappearing; cats, dogs, pond fishes..."

"Do you latterly work for the animal protection, Vicki? This can become dangerously! Last week there had been a little rough-up between animal protection activists and livestock transport truckers!"

"Ya know what, Mike?! Don´t ask lots of stupid questions, but swing your butt into your trenchcoat and get over here. Bring in the team. CSI etc. Then you can look at this paste game on your own! We are down at the lake shore in the rainwater drain, Hammersmith Avenue." Vicki stopped him dead in his track.

"Wallpaper paste? Did they wrap your corpse into wallpaper and did they paste him to the wall then?"

"Exactly, Mike! And right now he begins to complain about the wallpaper design and Henry runs out of arguments with him, because he has forgotten to bring in the sample collection! You know where to find us!" Vicki hung up and Henry couldn´t hide a smirk, because he naturally had heard the call from both sides.

Half an hour later, Mike was stomping thru the tunnel with an expression of disgust on his face. When he reached them, he directly started to complain about:

"Couldn´t you tell me directly that I gonna need rubber galoshes?!" he directed to the large blotches of slime which were spreading everywhere. But Mike didn´t wait for any answer and turned to the mortal remains which were lying at the wall. There were only bones and a part of the head left over from the person and some rags of clothes. All of it covered by the same slime, which was spreading everywhere in the form of stripes and lumps.

"Heaven! What kinda stuff is that? Looks as if he or she had been steamrolled by an oversized slug which finally rasped off the flesh thoroughly..." Mike directed to the head which lacked of large amounts of hair and tissue at the side and on first view, it seemed to show traces of rasping and scratching.

"_For you...at first a fisherman will have to get rasped and die!_" Mike reminded the cynical comment from the fisherman, who had been in his office tonight.

"Vicki! Please! Don´t tell me now, that you have seen a giant slug crawling out of here just before! Since you hooked up with Henry, only shit is following in your trail!" He directed with his thumb to Henry, who was standing behind him.

"I´ve accompanied Vicki because she wanted to look around here at all costs. And my raising doesn´t allow it, that I let her go down here alone to such a dangerous location. And that´s not out of no reason, Detective!" Henry mixed in while he directed to the dead. His voice was cool and Mike would have liked to beat him onto his royal nose.

All we gonna need now is a royal bastard acting up as the women´s protector! But this guy would get it fast enough, that Vicki wasn´t up for such games. Not Vicki! Vicki, who ever and everywhere was taking matters in her own hands, always having her way, no matter what! She´d rain on Fitzroy´s parade early enough.

Fitzroy, who...

Unintentionally Mike´s right hand went up to his neck and without thinking about it consciously, his index finger found the slight unevenness, where the scar was which Fitzroy´s teeth had caused. The place where he had bitten him, when he had attacked him like a starved animal. That had been a short time ago and that damn scar would never disappear completely.

That´s no wonder when he worked my throat like an animal...

Wouldn´t have Vicki stepped in his path, he probably wouldn´t have survived. But eventually it had been him, Mike, who was responsible for it because he had Fitzroy delivered to this lunatic. Fitzroy had excused for the attack, but that was quite the same as if you got bitten by your own dog: the unconscious, deep trust was gone and all that remained, was an uneasy feeling.

But what he should have been expecting from a vampire? Being hurt, starving, almost bled out...

The animal within the human.

Stop! Fitzroy wasn´t a human being. At least not in the common way.

But what was lying in front of him here right now, had once been a human. A human who was either killed by an unknown creature... And this option didn´t fit into his list-of-cases-he wanted-to-solve. Or he would be in need of a damn good explanation why this victim of murder was buried under a pile of wallpaper paste-like slime. And the answer wasn´t to be found in said list.

The way it looked like...he would...oh, groans, once again...would have to bend his report until it would fit into the common sight of crime cases.

Mike didn´t even try to search thru the clothing for any documents or an ID card. That could be done by the laboratory. The stench that emanated from this sticky mass, was reminding him at fermented milk. Probably this stuff was part of the gastric juice of the unidentified killer...

With a jolt he pulled back one foot which had landed in the stuff with the shoe´s tip. All he needed was, that his shoes would dissolve like from this acid in the movie Alien.

"Why can´t any day of work just be ending completely normal? First of all this fisherman, who told me anything about destroyed nets...as if...fish theft and finally he comes on to me stupidly, when I told him, that for his case the DoF is responsible. And now this crap here!" Mike directed to the crime scene.

"Fisherman? A fisherman paid you a visit? Cuz of damaged nets?" Vicki was suddenly staring at Mike in great interest. "Do you know that there might be a connection to this case here? Mr. Paddington up the road has lost his whole pond of koi carps. And there was this sticky stuff everywhere." Vicki told him.

"The fisherman has been speaking about rasped fishes..." Mike reminded.

"Does he still have any of these damaged fishes? Then we might be able to relate it with this, cuz of the tooth profile!" Vicki suggested.

Mike was looking at her for a moment as if she had lost her reasonable mind. He indicated the remains of the dead victim.

"You won´t tell me seriously, that whosoever has stolen the fishes of this Mr. Paddington, is responsible for _that_ mess! This is a case of murder! And Rajani will find out, that our John or Jane Doe here has nothing to do with any pond or sea fishes. That´s the last I´m gonna need!" Mike shot her a venomous look, his facial expression cold as ice, when he dug thru his blonde hair.

"All-round killer! Just what I need now..." he grunted angrily when he turned back to the victim. "I´d be wondering, won´t it be Vicki and Henry who called me in here...!"

"What do you want to indicate by this, Detective?" Henry mixed in, who naturally had been understanding the words which had been grunted with a low voice. Mike turned around abruptly and his blue eyes were boring into those of Henry.

"Yeah, when you´re mixing in, I can bet my ass for it, that it´s such friggin crap into which Vicki is tracking me again! Before you showed up here, Fitzroy, my criminal world had been quite okay! Only completely normal crimes and completely normal manic killers!" Mike hissed.

"Detective, you can´t always choose your cases by the way they might fit into your philosophy. For sure you had to cope with not-normally-manic-killers and..."

Henry´s eyes were still cerulean, he seemed to have himself under control.

"Yeap! First of that kind had been this friggin´ Norman Bridewell, demon killer or killer demon, just as you like it! I for my case, prefer that kind, which can be brought to reason with handcuffs or a good old bullet from a Glock-9mm. Without wooden stakes or Holy Water!" Mike´s face had turned red and Henry heard, when the heart of the cop was beating faster and more violently.

Henry wasn´t up now for one of Celluci´s verbal provocations, which however he might have finished with a single comment, because the detective, in difference to Vicki, wasn´t immune against vampiric compelling skills.

"Detective, this case of disappeared animals is Vicki´s case. We have searched for these animals and stumbled over this victim here. So we had to call the police. All lege artis (*due to law). I would recommend that we´ll continue our investigations and you´ll continue your investigations of this case of death. That would satisfy everybody being involved." Henry replied. He tried to sound as calm and as unbiased as possible, so he won´t annoy Mike any more.

Since the nights when he had been held captive by his old archenemy Javier Mendoza, the detective seemed to show some uncertainty in his presence. Probably he was haunted by his conscience, eventually it had been him who delivered him to Javier. Both of them were victims. He, Henry, because he had been tortured in the worst way during two nights and could almost have died of it. And Mike basically had become a victim, because this lunatic Inquisitor Mendoza had tricked him.

You had to be living for centuries, to take up with this guy´s experience and cunning, Henry thought, and with it he had a definite advantage, compared to Mike.

Maybe I should have a talk in confidence with Mike in a calm moment, Henry thought. Celluci wasn´t a bad guy, only running in rails in his points of view and full of prejudices against him, due to lacking experience. Always having the fear, that a vampire was a predator in human shape. Incalculable and dangerous. Although, he, Henry, could be completely different...

When I would be alone with the Detective, I might show him the by no means at all dangerous side of Henry Fitzroy...

"Don´t tell me now what I´ll have to do, Fitzroy!" Mike growled, his bad temper totally unveiled now. Mike didn´t hold back anything now. Henry´s eyes bled black in a flash, time to get Mike back onto the rug.

"Relax, Detective!" Henry whispered a command. His voice had gotten this timbre he used to influence the target subject. Blackened eyes were looking into cerulean. The color was fascinating, even for Henry. With a self directed command, Henry turned away from any thoughts of Detective Celluci...the things he might be able to do with him...and turned back to Vicki again.

"Shall I drive you to Dr. Mohadevan´s laboratory? Then you can deliver in your samples, before Mike comes in with his own evidences.

"Would be very nice of you, Henry. Because until I´ll get any cab here, Mike may be faster. And when Rajani doesn´t come forward, Coreen can connect to the case. Maybe she knows or can find out anything about the mysterious beast or prehistoric animal, which is marauding this area...I can only hope, that until then...no further humans might lose their lives. We have to find an option very fast, to get rid of this whatsoever..." Vicki whispered while she shot a view at Mike, who was investigating the crime scene with somebody from the CSI team.

"You don´t wanna get Mike into the boat?" Henry whispered into her ear.

She shook her head no.

Mike doesn´t believe me, when I´m telling anything about a slime dripping monster..."

"But he did believe you, when both of you were searching for me..." Henry replied.

"Yeap! But you´ve been face to face with him before! And what you are." Vicki was smirking a bit, but didn´t let Mike out of the corner of her eyes, what for she had to turn, so she could watch him without attracting attention.

"So!? Does your Detective only believe, what he sees?" Henry was putting the prejudice theme onto the table.

"In his work, Mike is tied to the presence of evidences to solve a case unquestionably. Then it´s not so easy to get involved with...very unusual things." Vicki tried to intercept the objection and to protect Mike to some certain degree.

Henry laid his arm around Vicki´s back, and after a last look onto Mike who was staring at the slime dripping ground in disgust, he whispered: "Let us drive, Vicki. Mike should get that managed. Then we will go on at yours..." Vicki was nodding. She felt Henry´s hand in her lower back who was softly shoving her in the direction of the exit. Almost she´d have twitched under the touch, but she kept control in the last moment. She started to move, still meaning to feel his hand in the small of her back and her brows were knitting skeptically, but then she concentrated on the jumping beam of light in her front, that came from her Mag Lite.

Henry had to be directly behind her.

Very near.

When Henry wanted to follow Vicki, a hand fell onto his arm. His head turned around abruptly, surprised, because his view had been focused on Vicki, who was going thru the tunnel in front of him. There, where the lights of the police didn´t reach over anymore.

"Don´t pull Vicki into things, which are none of your business, Fitzroy!" Mike warned him. "I don´t wanna Vicki getting into trouble! Cuz of you!"

Henry was looking at him for a long moment.

"You should trust me, Detective. Think of the hallway, down in the cellar of that church...You´ve forgotten so soon?" Henry asked in an accentuated pleasant tone and blue eyes were looking into those of the Detective for a long moment.

Mike let go Henry´s arm and sighed, The sigh sounded...abashed. Then he silently nodded and turning back to his work and Henry looked after him for a moment.

Then he followed Vicki outside.

Mike tried to avoid stepping into the sticky mass, but tried to inspect the mortal remains more closely, though. The forensic scientist in front of him had crouching down regardless amidst that mess, completely trusting his rubber boots. When he got up again, his foot made a disgusting, smacking sound when he lifted it.

"Such a large amount of this kinda sticking mass I haven´t seen since they brought a report about a fire in a company, that produced bulking agents on CTV. I´m really eager to know, what it exactly is. By its smell...obviously anything like stomach contents or digestive juice..." the man from the CSI meant

Mike pulled a face, directed to the rubber boots which the scientist wore.

"Are you sure that your boots are acid resistant? I mean...if it´s that, what you´re thinking it to be...then in your position I´d be careful..."

"Nitrile rubber. Acid and chemical resistant. No prob, but thanks for bothering, Detective. Probably rather a prob for the corpse here...At first view, the tissue looks digested..."

"Di...what? Do you mean, who or what ever has battered that poor bugger, has thrown him up again...?" An ice cold shudder was driving down Mike´s spine.

"Predators who gulp down their prey in one piece, mostly throw up the parts afterward, which are indigestible for them." the scientist explained to him. "It differs from species to species, what will be vomited again..."

"Thank you! Too much details! Let that to Dr. Mohadevan...she will find out more exactly. Written, as a printed report, that´ll look much cleaner..."

Mike turned around, using his own Mag Lite to light up the tunnel to the exit. He was yearning for the moment, when he´d be standing outside again, in the clean, snow covered winter night of Toronto. Clean air. No smell...no, stench of anything. The walls of the tunnel, accompanied by the stench, seemed to wrap around him like a moist, cold mass.

_The air in the tunnel was cool and moist and for a mere second, there were only the dripping sounds of water. A low and steady noise. A single second! Fitzroy´s face with the widened eyes was a mask of sheer disbelief. His eyes turned bled black and then his hand pushed against the moist wall of the tunnel, when he was vainly searching for a hold. He staggered, then he sank against the wall and then a tortured groan was disturbing the silence, brought out between clenched teeth.._

_In disbelief he was staring at the shape of the vampire, who grabbed for his chest with his other hand, where this thing was, that Mendoza had given him...to press it on the vampire´s chest. To make the vampire manageable: yes! But what he could see, seemed to be way beyond it, as Fitzroy was coiling in pain. His mouth was wide open and he seemed to fight for every single breath, on the border to lose consciousness._

_Mike felt glowing heat running down his spine. Damned! What had he done? But now it became a point of no return, when suddenly this priest was appearing in the tunnel in front of him and he could see, that the expression of pain in Fitzroy´s face was turning into panic._

_Vicki was violently pulling at his shoulder and Mike felt like wrapped in cotton balls. Anything was shouting into his ears, but he couldn´t distract his look from Mendoza and Fitzroy._

"_What have you done, asshole?...Henry! Henry..." He didn´t listen to her what she said, turning his face to her._

"_Henry is a killer! Plain and simple!"_

_Any crap, just to make her shut up! They had to make it thru this now..._

Mike felt how the damp atmosphere was clinging around his chest like iron. He had to get out of here! The images, these damned images, which this crap tunnel let boil up within him...there were too vividly. Even now he believed to have Fitzroy´s tortured groaning in his ears, if he didn´t pull off from it with all willing...

_He was staggering against Fitzroy´s shoulder. Fitzroy, who was keeping himself upright with much effort, caused by the way Mendoza had battered him. Everything started to swim in front of his eyes, when Vicki simply loaded him onto Fitzroy. A hand, that seemed to be warmer than his own, did reposition the weight, which Mike meant to Fitzroy. For a moment his look fell onto the macabre impressions in the chest of the vampire. Then his head fell against the shoulder that was holding him. His feet seemed to tangle up with themselves when he tried to make a step and now it was Fitzroy, who was more dragging him, than Mike was walking by himself. Heaven, the bastard must have drained him halfway. Casually he reminded, that a volume loss shock would strike with the loss of more than one and a half liter of blood...than the sight turned black in his eyes and anything or anybody pulled him up. A macabre procession of two figures. One like the other at the end of his strength. He felt a wall in his back and a hand closed around his chin, turning his head to the side. There was warm breath at his throat and panic was surging up in him..._

_Hot...Why hot...? fingers felt for his throat, that was burning and hurting like hell. By now the more, when his head was moved upward by Fitzroy. "That...hur...ts..." Mike pressed out from a sore throat, helplessly hanging in the vampire´s grip, if Fitzroy now wanted to put him over the edge._

_A voice that felt like velvet in his ear, warm breath, so warm. Probably he, Mike, had lost so much blood, that soon he would be as cold as one of the corpses from the forensic._

_Then:_

"_I know! I´m so sorry, Detective...that was..." Pause, than Fitzroy hawed: "No...normal drinking..." Fitzroy. That bastard had almost downed him in his state of rampage. Dizziness swept over him, he slipped, was shoved up, kept upright like a kid. Powerful hands, strong enough to tear a massive wooden door from its hings like a piece of paper. But now they were so careful, yet being so gentle when they felt for his throat, velvety feeling over the ripped edges of the wound, that felt like a crater in the side of his throat. So soft, that now a warm shudder went down his spine. "Don´t be afraid, Detective! I will not hurt you again..."_

_Warm breath was streaming over his neck, then lips touched his wound and Mike felt a tongue moving soft and warm over the burning edges and jags. Does he put me over the edge now? Cold fear was clinging to his chest. Dying in the arms of a vampire...his body was trembling violently and for sure Fitzroy would feel it. The fear of a helpless victim, does that turn you on, vampire...? Then it turned dark around him._

_He was surrounded by darkness, when he forced his lids open within a booming skull. His head was lying on a soft but strong surface. He felt his hackles rise, when his reawakening consciousness was registering, that his head was lying in the lap of the vampire. There were taunt thigh muscles under his shoulders, his head and under his neck._

_Crap! He was lying on Fitzroy´s balls!_

_A hand was wiping hair from his eyes._

"_Easy, easy, stay calm. That´ll become all okay again, Detective..." That´s easy to say for that guy! First he almost kills me, then he babysits a cop! Groaning...There were steps. A lamp, a goddamn Mag Lite is blinding him. Fitzroy, who´s behind, under him, is hissing. Movement when the arm of the vampire shoots upward, in an attempt to protect his night sensitive eyes. Vicki´s voice..._

Mike was sighing when he stomped in direction of the exit. All of them had to cope with their personal images and memories.

He had to investigate a case of death.

Henry opened the luggage trunk of his Jaguar. Vicki laid her Mag Lite and the bags with the samples into it, grabbed her booties and placed one hand onto the edge of the luggage trunk for some support. With the tip of her left foot she kicked into the heel of her right foot, in an attempt to slip off the boot.

"Crap!" she cursed when she couldn´t get the boot down.

Henry smirked at her, then he opened the right door to the passenger´s seat and directed onto the seat.

"As Mylady wishes...!?"

Vicki looked at him. "Shall this be an invitation, Henry? I...uhm, I don´t believe that my boots...I mean, this slime and your car mats..."

"I thought that you may sit down, with your feet outside my car, then you can get rid of your boots any better than with your hand at the luggage trunk edge..." Henry explained the facts. He looked right into Vicki´s eyes.

Was there any expression of relief running over her face? What had she been expecting? Or said more correctly; what was she afraid of? He knew Vicki all too well and how she was reacting to him, when he carefully tried to come closer to her. Instead of any answer, Vicki hobbled to the passenger´s seat with one boot halfway down, letting herself sink onto it and she started to fight with it again.

"Crap! That happens when I´m wearing thick socks in the boots in winter..." she brought out between clenched teeth.

A pair of hands reached out for her leg and Henry pulled the boot down, together with her socks.

"Next foot please!" he ordered. Obediently Vicki lifted her left foot and the other boot was landing in the snow. Now she had to smile secretly, when Henry had crouched down in front of her like the boot boy. Vicki felt behind her back, searching for her replacement socks.

Henry bent over her, reaching behind her back and pulled out a bundle. His face was right in front of her, when he bent over her and his nostrils widened when he inhaled her specific scent. Vicki noticed it.

"Don´t tell me yet, please...that I´m smelling of poop...I know it myself!" she said, before Henry could come up with something else, she wasn´t up for by now. Too often Henry had tried to turn the leaf into a more private direction, which she had discussed out thoroughly before. He should know that she...

"That isn´t what I wanted to tell you, Vicki..." Henry replied with a nonchalant smile.

"So...what´s it, Henry?" Vicki looked at him with a scrutiny, that was up for nothing good, trying to get some time. She was all too well aware, what was about to come when Henry looked at her in this special way.

"My nose is able to filter, though, Vicki! I can scent your tension, though. Among the all covering stench from the boots. Celluci hasn´t even...done you any good!"

"Probably!" Vicki shrugged her shoulders. "I thought that..."

"What did you think, Vicki?" He gave her a long lasting look, more intensive than usually. Vicki bent back her head, obviously in an attempt to get a better focus on him, which a hint of skepticism in her eyes. Henry noticed, that her scent was changing and for a moment he enjoyed it, to play with her. When he had extended the pause long enough for his taste, he went on in a cajoling tone;

"Hm...what did you think about, Vicki...? Probably, that I may show you now on the backseat, what I wanna show you since a long time..?" Henry heard when she made a strained breath. Direct hit, Vicki! Henry looked at her. Pause. She was...trembling. His face was directly in front of her.

Then...

"Principally...I won´t be against it. But freshly showered and in a warm room might be more pleasing for you..." she gave back very slowly and hesitatingly. Henry was waiting patiently and there was a slight hope rising within him, that she might have turned her mind. His hope was dying soon when she added:

"Just in case of..."

He know that he was testing for uncertain waters in a risky way and he saw something flash thru her eyes. Out of the corner of his eye he looked out for her hand. To get himself a slap in the face...that was something, he even won´t have to accept from Vicki!

"We can drive away as soon as I´ll have my clean boots on, Henry!" she killed the moment in best Victoria Nelson manner.

Henry sighed, mad a step backwards and put her boots into the foot space. Without a word he grabbed her tainted boots, pushed them together with his own into a garbage bag and threw it into his luggage trunk. He slammed the lid shut, entering the car on the driver´s side and after Vicki had taken the passenger´s seat, he started his Jag. Henry moved the car into the ice covered lane of the narrow street, staring thru the windshield. Not that he might have gotten any problems with the darkness and the snow, but in the moment he avoided it to look at Vicki, who was sitting beside him for a while in utter silence. Henry was stuck in his own thoughts. Once again Vicki had managed it to...kill...a situation, which might have lead into getting her a bit more...thawed.

Why in heaven did she always retract from him, when he tried to break her walls? Was she completely fixed on Celluci! Had he taken her so fatally wrong, when he has had the feeling, that she wasn´t completely ignorant when it came to him? That at least she would return his interest, carefully?

Heaven, he had to cope with shy women in his long existence. Also such women who practiced their resistance as a challenging game. But anytime he had won them all. But Vicki...? was she still a bit shy, a bit uncertain with him, being a vampire, even when he couldn´t use his compelling skills on her. Vicki wasn´t any toy for him, no diverting exchange in the steady swapping of blood donors (a necessity) He felt attracted by her in a way he hadn´t felt since his relationship with Christina. But she was always retracting again, though...

When, a couple of weeks ago, she had been lying in his home, severely wounded and in a high risen fever, he had cared for her all night long. He had handled her body as necessary, in an attempt to care for her the best way he was able to. Vicki hadn´t been in any condition to protest and afterwards she didn´t mention anything. He had been risen too much as a gentleman, as shamelessly taken advantage of the situation. To care for her naked body, washing, bedding, cooling her body and calming her down when she was throwing around in terrifying nightmarish dreams... All of this had been a matter of course for him in this situation, without any ulterior motives...

Poker-faced he looked on the traffic, when they came into the busier parts of Toronto. So first he didn´t react when Vicki suddenly said anything.

"Can´t wait to listen to, what Rajani will find out about this stinking, sticking stuff...!" Vicki started in a casually tone and with the objectiveness of an experienced investigator. When Henry didn´t react directly, she focused her look onto him and he turned his face to her, when they had to stop at a traffic light.

"Yeah, with some certainty she might help us. I have the feeling, that Dr. Mohadevan is very experienced. We´re at your home in a moment." Henry directed into the direction, in which Vicki´s home and office were located, driving on when the traffic lights turned green.

Vicki knitted her brows, leaning back in her seat.

What the heck was going on with Henry?

Vicki was studying Henry´s face when he drove on to reach their destination. His voice had sounded cool, rather noninvolved and by any reason she´d felt uncomfortable with it. Anything was going on with him or more correctly, inside him. But what was it?

"Henry, I want you to drive me to Rajani first, and after it you can drive me home...Meanwhile I can call Coreen. Okay...?"

"Okay. Laboratory." he replied soundlessly.

"The address is..."

"I know, where it is. We still had been there together. Ya forgot?" Henry gave back without looking at her.

"Sorry!" she snapped and her voice was sounding sharper than intended. Her grayish-green eyes watched his facial profile, though she couldn´t see much in the dim light inside the car. But she could see, that he was stone faced, his lip´s line was slim, like being squinted.

She couldn´t accuse herself of a bad conscience and normally it wasn´t her habit to be very sensitive when she felt around in other people´s feelings. When, then it was rather taking stabs in the dark, with an accentuation on poking. But Henry wasn´t a perp or a suspect, who was sitting in front of her in the interrogation room.

When they finally stopped in front of the Forensic Institute and Henry was about to get out of the car, she laid her hand onto his arm, holding him back. By sheer strength Henry would have warded her off without effort, but he didn´t react.

"What´s up, Vicki? He looked at her with cerulean eyes, which looked cool as ice on the Lake Ontario now, his voice was strangely soundless. He seemed to be...frustrated. A situation she wasn´t used to with Henry. Vicki worked up her courage.

"Henry, what´s going on?" She tried to sound soft, not angrily what wasn´t easy with her.

"What shall be on?" he drew aside and tried to pull his arm off her hand, but her grab become stronger. Henry looked at her and his brows knitted; "Is there any problem with the laboratory?"

Don´t try to slip off my fork, Vicki angrily thought. Now, once she got started, she wasn´t willing to give way. Vicki wasn´t up for a frustrated partner and vampire...friend.

"Not with the laboratory. But I can´t get rid of the feeling, that _you_ are having a problem, Henry! With Mike? With me?" she fixed his eyes and his arm. It would have been easy to get away from her, but either his considerate behavior to women, he had been grown up to, kept him off it, or he simply didn´t want it.

"Not with..._you_."

"Then it´s all about Mike! Tell me, Henry! You can talk about with me openly. I´m understanding quite a lot." she began.

Henry looked at her, his view was anywhere between astonishment and annoyance, retraction.

"_You _are understanding a lot? _You_ of all?" Henry breathed deeply to keep his voice under control. Then everything broke free from him; "What do you even understand of it, Vicki? You´re just living some thirty years something and you don´t have my experience and experiences!" He breathed hard a couple of times, then he went on with a low voice; "I haven´t been in danger for the first time, the danger to get killed. To die the final death. When I was turned, I was locked in three days and nights in a wooden box!"

Vicki nodded. Henry had told her about before. In the night when he had talked about why and by whom he was turned into a vampire.

"And right now...back in a sewer, down there..." His voice stopped, then: "Do you know what it feels like? The same moldy air, the same moisture and tightness like in the tunnel, in which...in which this lunatic has me...I couldn´t even fight or run away...with this Illuminacion in my chest. The pain...the paralysis. Do you even have the slightest imagination what it feels like...? My heart...I thought it´ll be ripped in parts within my chest, being clutched by anything you can´t imagine...and the blood was fire in a veins...I...I...believe me, Vicki, I rather would have died in the tunnel down there...than to have endure this only one minute longer. And I had to endure this two nights and days, additionally to what Javier has done to me!"

"Days? I thought you...you to be asleep at daytime. I..." Vicki looked at him in horror.

"You don´t believe, that I was able to fall into my daytime sleep, don´t you? I was fully awake! All whole two damned nights and days long. Until you had been coming for me!"

"OMG! My goodness!" Vicki groaned and she became pale, the blood seemed to disappear from her head, giving space to a cold emptiness.

His voice became sharper. "All your studies of history can´t even tell you what it means, Vicki! Nothing of it! Your studies; bone-dry theory! Images? Only good to give some people some spine-chilling. But tie them to a table, burn their flesh, whip them, until their body is unable to resist any longer and the only thing you can still do...is screaming! To scream until your dried up throat can´t get out any sound and you´re eventually waiting for the darkness, when your body pulls the emergency break...and you finally...finally will lose consciousness...Just not to smell the stench of your burned flesh in your nose. Blood, burned tissue, death..." Henry hesitated, swallowing so hard that it was almost hurting. He was trembling...

"Back in the tunnel, down there, earlier...I did smell my own burned flesh, my deadly fear...again..."

Henry´s voice broke and a tear was running down his cheek. Vicki felt how much he was trembling under her hand and that nausea was rising in her.

And Mike...

Mike had...

The ground seemed to whirl around under her, seemed to break off...

_To be continued_


	3. Chapter 3 Until you will tell me, how to

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 3**_

**...until you´ll tell me how to get rid of it. **

Mike had brought her into this...No! Take a hold, stop! Mike hadn´t brought her, but Henry into this sheer hopelessly situation.

"_I will do, what I always do, when my partner is in trouble...and until we´ll have found Henry, you´re_ _my chauffeur!_" Her words...and Mike had only silently nodded.

I should have planted more than one punch on your chin, if I hadn´t needed you...

Vicki was dumb with rage. She couldn´t simply shout at Henry, just to get rid of her anger. She was so angry with Mike, so angrily with herself, cuz she had blindly trusted into Mike, cuz she could always trust Mike. She was angry with herself, because she didn´t know what she should or could say to Henry. Any excuse? Not being enough when someone had almost died, she thought.

What to tell him, now that he was sitting beside her, trembling and totally tensed. Obviously he tried to keep his countenance after this, his...emotional break out.

"Henry, I know that it won´t help you much, when I´m gonna say anything...Back in the past, on duty...I often had such..."

"You aren´t my therapist, Vicki! I shouldn´t have get started with it!"

"That´s a mistake, Henry! About that, you should..."

"Don´t tell me what I´ll have to do! I´m living long enough to know by myself, what to do or not to do, Vicki!" He looked at her with dark eyes, then getting out of his car. Without a word he was keeping the door open for her.

"So repression starts! What does he even think..." Vicki mumbled, when she got out of the car and went over to the door of the laboratory, after she had taken her samples from the luggage trunk.

Henry will kill me tomorrow, when his luggage trunk is still stinking of this paste, she thought shortly when they entered the elevator.

On the second floor they met Dr. Mohadevan.

"Hello Vicki! What brings you in to me? Mr...uhm...Fitzroy? Right?" she smiled at Henry, who was nodding with a smile.

"Fitzroy. Simply Henry for you, please...We´ve met before. Under some less comfortable conditions.

"You´re working together yet with Vicki?"

"Yes. In a manner of speaking, Dr.!" There was a soft smile on his face. Rajani looked at him, noticing his slightly paler face and calm breathing rate. Not entirely human, she stated to herself.

Vampire.

She wasn´t afraid of him, to her he was simply another species walking the surface of earth. She had learned to know him as a controlled, kindly and always caring being when he was interacting with...mortals. Then she turned to Vicki.

Vicki placed the bag with the samples on the table and Dr. Mohadevan was looking at them with interest.

"Where did you get that from?"

"That´s outta rainwater drain down at Hammersmith Avenue and from a garden, from a lattice of a pond. Half the tunnel was full of it. That piece of tissue, Mr. Paddington meant, is obviously from one of the koi-carps. Henry has found it in a bush..." she explained.

"Koi carp mucosa. In a bush...?" she turned her face, looking at Vicki in a way, that Vicki knew all too well and which said; Not all of what I see, will be written in my report.

Vicki rolled with her eyes. Slime, once again slime. "First; slime, then slime skin..." She gasped in resignation.

"Mucosa." Dr. Mohadevan softly corrected her. "Fishes are having mucosa in difference to mammals, which wear a fur. That´s all. So...this is from a koi carp..." She laid the sample onto a microscope slide, then she bent over her microscope and watched more closely. She regulated the adjustments and looked again, then Rajani directed to the microscope slide.

"That´s definitely koi carp mucosa. Normally the surface should be dry, when you´ve found that outside the water out there. But this sample is covered with large mucosa cells which definitely don´t belong to our koi carp. Additionally the surface is affected. Wouldn´t I know it any better, I´d say...it´s kinda fermented like it has passed through an intestinal system..." she explained.

Vicki bent over the microscope, putting her glasses to the side.

"Uhm...can´t see..." she silently mumbled, when the sight was foggy. Rajani made some adjustments for her and Vicki could see round, white circles that looked to her like balls of glass or images from hailstones, she had seen anytime, anywhere. "To me it looks like...ice globes..." she lifted her head and smiled at Rajani. Then her face got a rather disgusted expression, when she went on:

"Does that mean, if I´m understanding you correctly; fed and thrown up again...?!"

"I´d say so! Let´s have a look on the other samples..." Dr. Mohadevan took a spatula, putting some of the glassy mass onto another slide and inserted it into the microscope.

"The same kind of mucosa cells. Large, roughly structured..." she waved over to her assistant McGormick, who came over to them. "Mac, please take these samples and check them for me, which chemical structure this has...And Mac...it´s urgently, please!" she begged him with some insistence.

After one hour Mac came back, presenting her a short-term analysis. Dr. Mohadevan read thru the file, reading it again and then she shook her head. Henry and Vicki were looking at her in utter expectation.

"What is it?" Vicki asked her and her fingertip moved up to the base of her nose, kneading it out of habit. Henry knew, that she did this, when her eyes got tired.

"That doesn´t fit together, anyway how you´ll turn this... Rainwater drain. Lake Ontario. Fresh water..." she mumbled thoughtfully and looked at Vicki.

"What doesn´t fit, Rajani?"

"Myxine glutinosa does not live in fresh water. The slime cells belong to Myxine glutinosa..." Dr. Mohadevan explained to her with a shake of her head.

"WHAT the hell is Myxine WHAT...?"

"I hope, that it does NOT descend from hell..." Henry mixed in with a disapproving glance. Vicki shot him a view. Hell had become a special opponent to Henry...and to her.

"Myxine glutinosa, the North Atlantic hagfish. He lives in salt water of around 50°F, in a depth between ninety and six thousand feet in the Atlantic. He´s a predator and scavenger and a varmint in fishery, because he attacks and feeds on caught fishes in trawl nets. And the slime contains mucin and keratin like proteins. The hagfish can absorb food thru its skin when it´s inside carrion. It´s mouth contains , like in a shark, a tight row of teeth, which are built by horn however, instead of dentin...here, I´m having an image..." Dr. Mohadevan directed to her computer, where she had uploaded an information from the internet.

Vicki put her glasses on, when she bent nearer. Henry was looking over her shoulder and his brows knitted...

A rose up to lightly brown colored, elongated body, equal to that of a snake or worm. The head was surrounded by a ring of thick, sausage like tentacles, the mouth a battery of horn teeth. Length; one foot up to two and a half feet was written in the description.

Not six to eight feet!

"And you´re sure that...it is _this_ beast...?" Vicki directed to the screen, her voice was full of disbelief.

"The analysis of the material says Yes! But the length which you gave, does not fit to it. The less, that you´ve found the slime samples in a garden! Some species of eels can overcome short distances over solid ground in moist area. For example between two arms of a river, but not so Myxine. The hagfish does only live in salt water and was never testified in fresh water."

"Might this beast have come into the Lake Ontario by swimming thru the Saint Lawrence River?" Vicki was asking, when she thought about how this could fit together reasonably.

"Yes and no." Rajani gave back, but even she as a scientist was sounding a bit doubtfully.

"Mike will show up here with a corpse shortly, Rajani! He or she was lying in the same rainwater drain, covered by the same stuff!" Vicki was forewarning her.

"Do you want to indicate, that such an animal could have killed a human. Probably it has only fed on the corpse. Grazing on found corpses is often a problem, Vicki. Because it can hide the real cause of death." She once again watched down onto the sample of slime.

"Then please take a look at the bones, if there are traces of gnawing..." Vicki suggested.

"Uhm, that can also be an indication of...simple feeding or gnawing on a corpse. First I´ll have to dissect the body thoroughly, to tell anything about the cause of death, Vicki...you know it."

"And how long will you need?"

"Difficult to tell." By Vicki´s voice she could tell, that she was concerned about more than the fact that Mike might kick her butt.

"I´m afraid that we won´t have so much time. And Mike will rip off your head, when you´ll tell him what we´ve been talking about here!" Vicki replied. She was looking very skeptically and Henry let his view move through the nightly laboratory.

"Rajani! Please don´t deny the monster-kills-human-thesis. It has always been you who was constantly telling me, that you´re a scientist and by this open-minded for everything." Vicki directed to the table and then to Henry, who had whirled around by her words and was now looking at both women with a view, which was a mixture of astonishment and slight amusement.

"How please, will I have to understand this now? Is it about the scientist question or do you refer to the monster-kills-human-thesis as a hint to _me_? The negation of the last I´ve testified to you a short time ago, as far as it...affects me!" He directed to himself and his voice had a hint of allegation.

_He´s a killer- plain and simple_.

Henry was still hearing it in his ears. Mike´s words. And the damn sewer tonight had it all brought up again, almost physically...

"I don´t see you as a monster, Henry!" Dr. Mohadevan explained in utter calmness. She had, by Vicki´s begging, the less by that from Henry, paid a visit at Henry´s home to look at Mike´s bite mark wounds. At the same time she had checked Henry, diagnosing two broken ribs and a lot of bruises. Results of the torture Mendoza had committed on him. Nothing that won´t heal, but uncomfortable enough as long as it would be lasting.

Conscious of guilt as she was, the first nights Vicki had always asked for the wound marks on his chest, when Henry was coming to her. Anyway they needed longer to heal than the other wounds. Her proposal, that he should drink more blood was regretfully negated by Henry. Doesn´t bring anything, I´ve still tried it...I´ll simply have to wait, he has answered.

"What do you think of me, though?" Henry threw back at her. He sounded a bit huffy and it seemed, that he wanted to provoke anyway. What the heck was going on with him? Which touchiness did they expose in him?

Dr. Mohadevan could almost read it in his face. An expression of hurt that was shining up in his eyes. So she decided to intervene.

"A special and interesting species. For me, there are no monsters in the sense of the word, Henry!" Dr. Mohadevan tried to soften his mood. "I see, I notice and I accept, when I meet somebody or anything, who or what is unusual and new to me. You have been in an extraordinary situation, though you didn´t kill neither Mike nor Vicki, although you could have probably done it! And that, this...control...differs you from what humans normally call a _monster_!"

He looked at her, being astonished, being silent for a moment and she gave him a conciliatory smile, putting the copies of the analysis files together and then she reached them to him.

"Take this and speak about it with Vicki and her assistant. Maybe you´ll find a possibility to withdraw it from the area, before it can cause more damage...Maybe you should turn to the Department of fishery too, when the attacker strikes from the Lake Ontario..." she recommended.

"Thank you, Dr.!" Henry nodded, taking the files and reaching them to Vicki, who was hiding them into her large bag.

"We should take care for, that we´ll make a lift-off before Mike shows up here! In the moment I´m not up to his ideas!" She was referring to Mike´s verbal attacks against Henry and his partnership with her.

**On the road again**

When they were down again, sitting in Henry´s Jaguar, Vicki brought up the theme again, what needed all of her bravery. Not when it came to Henry but the more with herself.

"Henry, what was going on? Nobody does accuse you cause of what has happened. So you shouldn´t accuse yourself. Where have your pride and your self-confidence gone to? Both you could built up enough within the last five hundred years, as that Mike´s sappy talk might touch you!"

"Mike´s sappy talk, as you so eloquently put it, has almost killed me! And you too! And this has nothing to do with pride or self-confidence. Still think about what he took out again tonight!" Henry countered.

"Henry!" Vicki laid her hand onto his forearm. "...you don´t know Mike that long, as I do...He has his imaginations about, how his world has to work and you´ve shaken his view of the world to the core...Mike did help me in these two days! Without him, I wouldn´t have found you...Not fast enough to prevent this lunatic from killing you...And...uhm, you have bitten him..."

"I have been starved out and almost mad by pain."

"Exactly! That hasn´t been a normal feeding. And what is coming from Mike now, is more the reaction of a frightened kid, who betakes himself for attack, so nobody will see his fear. Because in one thing Mike is as stubborn as I am; a cop with fear does not fit into his self-conception! Attention; yes! But that been...deadly fear. Mike has only felt fear when you had been hanging at his throat... And because of this, by now he will not let pass by any option to attack you!"

"Should I have asked for his _permission_ beforehand to take his blood? I have been halfway dead! I was _starving_...!" he looked at her with his eyes turning cobalt. It was Mike who drove me that far, this accusation was written in his eyes. Mike needed no excuse, it had to come from Mike´s side!

"Please, Henry...! You´ve...asked me too when you had been severely hurt. In the park. Have you thought of this?"

"That has been another situation. I had everything under control. That´s the difference!" he looked at her with a view between hurt pride and...desperation.

The loss of control had to be gnawing at him far worse than the other tortures he had been suffering. He, who had been fighting for his humanity after the turning. And who was carrying his human side in front of him like a shield. He had told her how much he had been fighting to get the animal within under control, when he was newly turned. He had told it her when they had been hunting the Windigo. And in the same night, all his conceptions had threatened to go down the drain...

Vicki did believe him, did trust him.

And she was still trusting him now. Anything else was out of the question for her. Irrespective to what Mike was arguing.

Mike, who was acting like a naughty child.

All of it...self-defense. Camouflage in an attempt not to be showing any fear.

Definitely, Henry had attacked him, being completely out of control, ravaging his throat. By this everybody would simply feel fear. Also an experienced cop who was standing his ground. For Mike it had been like the attack of a freaked out fighting dog. With the difference, that this hadn´t been a dog but anything that _looked_ like a...human.

"Vicki, please! I´m...!" he swallowed hard and she could see his Adam´s apple jumping and for mere seconds his eyes closed, then he breathed out, then he went on; "I...I´m not up for it to discuss this out yet thoroughly. Please, Vicki! I begging for your understanding, only this once. Maybe once later. I...I know that you only want to help me, but...that´s hurting to much now! Not...from your side, but I simply can´t this in the moment..." Henry looked at her, his eyes a plea.

"Let us drive, Vicki!" Henry directed backwards to where a familiar car was approaching.

Mike Celluci.

Vicki turned her head to get sight of what Henry had been referring to, then she nodded in agreement.

"Go, Henry!" she agreed. The Jaguar moved out of the parking lot, slipping into the poor traffic before Mike would get sight of them.

While they were driving, Vicki called Coreen from her cell. Though it was late, the goth was suddenly fully awake. "A hagfish? What kinda hagfish?" Coreen´s perky voice was sounding from the cell receiver.

"Rajani means, that the creature, that is responsible for the disappearing of all these pets, is a..." Vicki looked into the file; "...a North Atlantic hagfish...Myxi...Myxine glutinosa. At least so far as it comes to the analysis of this sticky slime paste, which we have found everywhere, where animals got lost. And...there´s a case of death!"

"Oh goodness! Do you think that this eel has...killed someone? Like the Windigo did?" She heard Coreen gasping.

"I´m afraid...yes! Please look what you can find out! We´ll meet at my office! And first of all...how we can find this beast and how it can be killed!" Vicki hung up.

"Do you think this to be a good idea, Vicki? Setting off and killing it? Practically you´re knowing nothing about it, but that it´s large and dangerous, Vicki..." Henry warned her, while he was driving the Jag through the traffic. To make matters worse, it started to snow again. No large, moist snowflakes but rather small grains of snow. Henry knew that this could only mean one thing; the temperature had gone down and it was about to become really cold... So be it, he thought. They won´t have to think about the snow now, but about the fact that Vicki obviously hasn´t learned anything from the last disaster in hunting down an unknown being...

Her intention was bearing a fatal resemblance to the Windigo case.

"First we have to find out, if it is using the sewer as an entrance to its hunting grounds. Probably we´ll get hold of it on its prey."

"To disturb anybody or anything during feeding is a super idea, Vicki! Really! Absolutely fantastic! I can really recommend this, when you want real trouble...!" Henry looked at her appraisingly.

"In the past they caught wolves with baits too!"

"Wolves! Vicki! Those aren´t six to eight feet long and all over slick." Henry closed and shook his head no.

"A wolf of some five feet might have a damn large yap!" Vicki added sarcastically.

With some concern he thought back to their last trial of a hunt, when Vicki wanted to kill the Windigo. Even for him the monster had been one size too large and too strong in the first attempt. Who knows what this hagfish was hiding behind the edge.

"We´ll search for a solution, together with Coreen. And then I don´t wanna hear any patters like: the great vampire is afraid of a zombie!" Henry looked at her meaningful. "When one can´t choose his opponent, one should start it advisedly and not with the head right thru the wall, like you tend to do, Vicki!"

"That means...you don´t wanna help me, Henry?!" Vicki complained in annoyance. What was going on with Henry? Had she done anything to piss him off? Or was it all about Mike and him being involved again, now that the case of lost animals had improved into a case of...animalistic...homicide.

"I´ll help you, Vicki! But you won´t be going into it this time all alone. Do we agree with it?"

"I´ll listen to you, Henry..." she looked at him with such an impudent grin, that Henry could only shake his head in disagreement. Did Vicki think that she was shielded by any invisible immortality, since the demon signed her with these tattoos?

"Every time when you got started all on your own, against former, contrary agreements, you´ve brought you into imminent danger.

"Which you had saved me from always." she countered with a smile.

"I did not imagine our partnership as a steady-state of a saving-your-life-situation, only because you don´t go with the formerly made agreements, Vicki! And that isn´t funny at all right now!"

Shortly after Henry and Vicki had reached her home and office, Coreen was showing up. She was carrying a whole pile of books, which seemed to be heavy enough to let it simply drop onto Vicki´s desk.

"Coreen!"

"Yes, Ms. Nelson...!?" Coreen gave her an innocent look, being well aware what was coming next.

"Coreen, please tell me now, that you didn´t _organize_ all these books anywhere again!" Vicki looked at her warily and her voice made it clear, what she thought about the organization talents of her assistant, which seemed to be at least...questionable...from time to time. Or better not.

"If you wanna mean, that I came into ownership of these books illegally, then you´re pretty wrong with it!" Coreen looked at her and her voice sounded a bit insulted.

"Zoology of the fishes of Lake Ontario...Taxonomy of the species of the northern maritime zones...Zoo-pathology of salt water fishes..." Vicki was reading over some titles. "I know that you´re interested in the paranormal and occultism, but I didn´t know that your a fan of fishes..." Imaging her assistant to sit in front of a tank with plants and a swarm of fishes in it...OMG! Coreen would at least prefer a terrarium with lizards, snakes or at least hand sized bird spiders. Without being talking about more strangely creatures...

"My Mom once had an ornamental fish tank. But all of them were small, nice fresh water fishies. These books have been borrowed from my neighbor, who studies biology. Honestly, really! I told him that I´ll have something to research and he borrowed them to me..." Coreen affirmed.

Henry rolled his eyes with an inner sigh. Hopefully Coreen hadn´t n off any more details about what she wanted to research exactly. It was none of the neighbor´s business to know, that they were in search for an oversize-slime monster, that was endangering the lake and the surrounding area. The vampire hysteria which had infected Toronto in spring, had been enough to show him , how fast his security could be endangered. And a mass hysteria cause of an oversized hagfish; absolutely a no go!

"I hope that you´re aware of how expensive books for the university are!"

"Ms. Nelson! I´ve been studying myself! I know it!"

"Whereas your exclusive works are for sure more expensive than these bio-tomes!" Vicki shot back, unable to let this end without having the last word. As usually, Henry thought. Why did humans always discuss matters endlessly, instead of focusing onto what was up on the table? First thing comes first! Not so with Vicki and her assistant...

"Okay! Stop that now, enough of these discussions! Probably we should come to terms with the case now!" Henry mixed in now, who was knowing Vicki´s escalating talent for discussions all too well.

He turned to Coreen, fixing her eyes with his suddenly blackened eyes, his voice got the timbre he used to influence his target subjects:

"Has your neighbor asked you about your research, Coreen? Did he ask anything about a mysterious killer?" Henry wanted to know if the case of death has spread among people´s knowledge, like the Norman Bridewell demon murders had in April...

"He asked me what I´m searching for and I told him, that I want to help my friend, who had caught a salmon with fin deformations. He didn´t ask any more details..." Coreen answered. She didn´t sound as if being under compelling, but Henry could hear the fine change in her voice, telling him, that he was successful with his attempts.

"Good! You will not give him any further information! Your neighbor is a nice guy, but it´s none of his business!" Henry commanded and then he released her from his control.

"Quite okay! No information!" Coreen agreed.

Vicki took Henry to the side; " Has this been necessary yet, Henry? This no-information-thing? This is Coreen, not one of your meal-on-legs!" Vicki whispered.

"Coreen for sure is a very good assistance, but sometimes she´s a bit too unselfconsciously open..." Henry whispered in such a low voice that Coreen couldn´t hear him. Vicki shrugged her shoulders and started her computer.

"Coreen, please search for mutations in this hagfish species. I´´l search the web!" Vicki split up work.

"We should search for methods to catch and finally disturb it, Ms. Nelson. It seems to have spread its natural habitat unexpectedly. A fish, more or less on dry ground, and this...with these temperatures!"

"Probably this whole slime protects it from drying out and from the weather too!" Henry meant. "It would explain why it can enter the sewer and solid ground. At least for a restricted time."

"When we might catch it onshore or in the sewer...Probably we´ll have a chance to cut it off from its way back and it may have to stay onshore so long, until all of its slime won´t help him out anymore! Fish dried out. Fish dead!" Coreen stated with a grin that was confident of victory.

"Not bad! But we don´t know, how long it´ll hold out under the slime cover until it´ll start to dry out! At least it has to be able to breathe normal air, outside the water. Normal eels can move over solid ground in moist areas to reach new places. Please look, if in any of your books anything is written about eel migration, especially hagfish migration, Coreen!" Henry recommended while he was paging through one of the books from the pile.

Vicki became aware how fast he was paging through the pages, mere seconds remaining on one page. She tipped onto a page and Henry looked up to her.

"Ya _reading_ the pages, Henry?"

He nodded. "Yes. One of the vampire skills; faster reading..."

"Wow, you should be working as an editor and review books! With this speed you´ll make more money with it than with the graphic novels..."

"But graphic novels are a way more creative way to make money, Vicki. It´s way more accommodating to me!"

"Creativity! Uhm, got it! It´s your favorite skill" Vicki gave back casually.

"We might test it out, Vicki!" Henry replied with a hint of passion in his voice. He looked at Vicki for her reaction, waiting.

"You mean...me...as a model for your next graphic novel? Vicki Nelson, private eye in action, with a gun and a baton! Uhm...should do some training before for acting..."

"Model. Uh, not exactly what I had in mind first of all..." Henry smirked. " I might prove my creativity, if you´ll only let me, Vicki!"

Vicki was fully aware of what he was up to.

"This theme had already been on the table, Henry..." she tried to slow down his...insinuating... optimism. "I´ve told you before, that this won´t work out..."

"Opinions can be changed and opposites can be proven..." Henry replied with his incomparable smile which only he could master. He bent nearer to her, as if he wanted to look onto the screen, his nostrils were widening a bit when he inhaled her scent. He could smell, that her scent had slightly changed into something more... So his words didn´t stay without an effect in her

Like by coincidence his nose touched her earlobe.

Vicki slightly twitched, she took her head back in an attempt to get a better look at him. "Henry!?" Hopefully it had escaped him, that a warm wave had been running down her spine to certain areas. Vicki tried to keep her face neutral, ignoring the slight trembling inside her.

"What...?" he asked her with an innocent smile.

"I´m not ready yet with my internet research!" Vicki replied and it sounded like an escape.

Henry looked on his clock.

"The night is still long enough and we might..."

"Henry! We have to solve a case!" she brought him down on the rug of reality and was typing determinedly on her keys.

He sighed inwardly and turned back to his book.

Coreen had been following Henry´s and Vicki´s playfully banter from one side. She had to hide a smile. Vicki was a tough woman and she had the guts to cope with a vampire. Coreen had brought up the point, that Vicki should put down her inner reluctance. A woman between two amazing, charming and interesting men! How could she be so self-restricting? When Henry would have turned his interest on her, Coreen, she wouldn´t have hesitated to run off with him immediately!

Henry shot her a look from the corner of his eye and Coreen pretended to be surprised by it, her lips opened slightly when she produced an innocently questioning smile. For sure she couldn´t fool a vampire! Hastily she turned to her own book again, in the hope that Henry won´t mention anything.

"YUP! Guess, that might it be!" Coreen suddenly brought out on such a level that especially Henry was twitching. Everybody looked at her.

Coreen was all smiles.

"Stop torturing us, Coreen! Share it with us!" Vicki had gotten up from her seat, but Coreen was still on her way around the table, putting the opened book onto Vicki´s desk. She directed to an article.

"Look, just here...: In rare cases the species Myxine can, by a jump mutation in the gen XP24-N, which causes a blockade of the regulation of linear growth, reach a size up to five feet. One specimen of unusual length, that was caught in the Northern Atlantic was showing the genetic defect, of which couldn´t be found out, by which reason it was caused. Until yet investigations couldn´t verify, if the mutation was caused by environmental influence or due to exposition to a noxa...heaven, what´s a noxa?" Coreen groaned.

"A noxa is a substance or a poison in the environment..." Henry was helping out.

"...caused by a noxa! Goodness! What if any environmental hog has poured anything into the lake again and all the fishes will mutate to monsters! These are horrifying perspectives!"

"we won´t hope for that, Coreen. But the text shows, that it can come to abnormal changes in the linear growth. And who knows if these five feet are the upmost limit! Possibly this had been a young specimen of the mutated variety...and our hagfish here is full-grown!" Henry meant after a look onto the image; "What is leading us to the next question:...

...How can we kill it?"

The last words came out with the pragmatism of someone, who wasn´t about to kill for the first time in his life.

_Henry is a killer. Plain and simple! _Angrily Vicki wiped the memories of Mike´s words aside.

Henry had been confronted by opponents, enemies and even paranormal creatures more than once in his long life. If any, then Henry was able to bring up a reasonable solution for their problem.

"A flamethrower always helps!" Coreen´s voice sounded confident of victory, as usually. Would there be anything outside, from which Coreen would shrink back? Sometimes her assistant was rather...unbiased.

"Especially when this thing conks out after the first shot!" Vicki´s voice was full of sarcasm in indication of the failed attempt to roast the Windigo with the self-made construction. "Your´s is only usable to flame-scarf a Christmas tree!"

"I didn´t tell you that you shall use up the whole tank volume on an innocent Christmas tree, Ms. Nelson. Eventually this isn´t the military version from _Aliens_!"

"With that toaster we´d probably be in the better position!"

"First we´ll have to lure our opponent into a trap, from which it can´t escape, without getting _us_! Maybe we should think about _this_!" Henry threw in.

"The best chances to lock in the monster and to kill it, we´ll probably have when it is in its favorite tunnel...On the lake and with one or a couple of boats...that´s too conspicuously and also ineffective, because there, its range of movement is too large..." Coreen came to the point. She had definite doubts that they would even be able to find the monster anywhere in the lake, if not with a sonar. Which only the police would have or any fisherman...

"The tunnel will be locked up by the police after the corpse was found in there..." Vicki pointed out.

"I don´t believe that this hagfish is capable of reading! If he wants to get in, he´ll get in! I only want to remind you of the sagged gate element!" Henry countered. The only question was, if the city had sent a repair group and the gate was locked up again.

"I´m for the tunnel option! There it can´t escape us so easily." Coreen was sounding damned euphoric. The argument was logical, admittedly, but there was someone who wasn´t all too enthusiastic. Coreen could read it in Henry´s face.

"Any doubts, Henry?" she asked.

"I _hate_ sewers" Henry answered with utter conviction.

"Did you never spend the day.. in a tunnel?" She sounded rather astonished.

"I´ve already taken refuge for the day at the most different places; rock caves, holes in the ground, mine tunnels, cellars...but not in tunnels in which oversized slime excreting or bone marrow eating creatures are dwelling."

"Tombs too? I mean, vampires are often descending from tombs..." Coreen was digging deeper, yet when they once got started with the matter.

"Do you think of me to be a relative of this moronic Count Dracula?"

"Coreen! Please! Henry is suffering from a sewer trauma, just in case you´ve forgotten it!" Vicki was looking at her over the edge of her glasses with a certain strictness.

"Do you have to put it that way?" Henry groaned and looked at her and shook his head. It was showing, what he was thinking of it.

"Henry, we have been talking about it at full length, down in your car and Dr. Mohadevan would agree with me in a medical sense, when I´m saying that you´re having a tunnel trauma. There are thousands of people suffering from any trauma.,,"

"I´m a vampire, Vicki!" Henry protested in a low but sharpened tone.

"Oh! I´ve obviously forgotten it! And that will make Your Grace, son of a king,vampire immune against it!" Vicki´s voice was dripping with sarcasm, then it turned to a more conciliatory timbre, when he shot her an angry view; "Henry, please, I only want to tell by this that I´m understanding, when you aren´t excited of the tunnel option. That does not make you vulnerable, but...more human. I´m not perfect at all in everything and that´s what makes us what we are. Perfectionism is making people cold and uninterestingly. And that´s not you, Henry! For this...I´ve met way too much cold perfectionists. And these were mostly found among criminals. Perfectly in everything but one... namely that we´ll get them all anytime!"

"I would prefer to get this monster now, before it gets the next clueless citizen!" Henry wasn´t in the condition or in the mood now to extend the theme with Vicki. That might be led by good intentions and it showed him, that Vicki was more interested in him than commonly. But after the rather physical pain had subsided, which the last encounter with the Great Inquisitor had caused him, he just needed time for himself to cope with the anguish. In this case Henry was glad that he was unable to dream.

That was sparing him any nightmares.

"Does somebody have an usable proposal, how we can get our hands on this beast? We won´t be able to avoid the tunnel, as this is the only bounded room..." Henry changed the theme now.

"We have to search for a fitting weapon and then I recommend, that one of us will take a position near to the sewer entrance, while the others are waiting inside...And the one who´s at the entrance will alert us when the slime monster is crawling in..." Coreen was coming up with a battle strategy.

"Good and well! And who´s the outpost?" Henry was rather skeptical, that this would work.

"Best is...you´ll do it, Henry!" Vicki directed to him.

"Why me?"

"You´ve said that the Windigo can´t smell your blood. Maybe also the slime bag won´t be able... That´s why I thought of you. It may not notice you, when it creeps in and not be growing suspiciously..." Vicki explained to him. She didn´t feel certain about this option, but to be honest, she didn´t have another, better idea.

"And you are standing in the sewer with waving arms, like a bait! Great option! Nobody knows how fast this slick bomb is..."

"But you´re the by far, fastest from all of us...and you can see in the dark. You´ll with us so fast at all...There might nothing be going wrong, Henry..."

"Wish I´d have your trust..." Henry groaned, who was already seeing in danger to be pasted and eaten by a slime drooling giant fish.

"I´m trusting you with my life, Henry! Still forgotten?" Vicki reminded him of the night on that cemetery, when they had eliminated the Voodoo queen.

"No, I haven´t forgotten. And I´m trusting you with my life too. But...that doesn´t mean, that we won´t have to be careful though, because we don´t know much about the skills of our enemy, but being able to crawl thru sewers and over solid ground, to breathe air and to feed on everything that is coming in front of its shark mouth." Henry had enough fighting experience throughout his life, so that he knew nobody to be taken too easily.

"And to break even strong iron bars in its path! So it´s pretty strong..." Coreen added with a warning undertone.

"Coreen, I don´t wanna wrestle down that beast, I wanna shoot it!" Vicki warded off her objection.

"Silver bullets, Ms. Nelson?"

"The last of them you´ve given Mike!"

"Uh oh, when the monster isn´t from the twilight zone or the otherworld or worse...one of Astaroth´s creatures, then normal projectiles will do too...You or Mike have even..."

"Keep Mike off it! He´s already sick of my freaking cases. This Medusa had been more than enough for him! I´m just asking myself, how he´ll be _explaining-to-normal _this corpse from the sewer to Kate..." Vicki groaned. Mike never had anyway manipulated evidences.

"Your detective is an amazing writer, Vicki!" Henry grinned.

"Where from do you know what Mike is writing in his report files?"

"Cuz I´ve helped him with the final report of the Norman Bridewell case..." Henry explained with a casual voice.

"You have...? I mean...Mike has asked _you_ for help? I don´t believe it yet!" Vicki looked into Henry´s eyes, her facial expression was showing her disbelief; "You didn´t coincidentally..._convince_ him into it, ain´t you? Ya know what I mean...!"

Henry lifted his hands in a gesture of innocence.

"I might do it to him. Unlike you, Detective Celluci isn´t immune to my manipulative skills. But it hasn´t been me that time! I only wanted to be certain that he doesn´t write any crap, which pulls me into it and that´s why I paid him a visit in his office. There he was sitting like someone in desperation in front of his report. And I´ve offered him to set up something for him, what he can look at and save finally. I only had to change small details, so it would fit into your police procedure. That´s all!" Henry shrugged his shoulders, tilting his head and he smiled.

"But don´t make that a habit! Mike shall do his work on his own and you´ll better stay with your graphic novels, Henry!"

"So shooting! Do you have any gun, Henry? I mean...anywhere..." Coreen´s hand made a movement like turning a key; "...locked up? Probably a shotgun or any equal large-caliber weapon. Elephant gun? Silver rifle?" She looked at him like at someone to expect the next wonder from. Henry, Knight in shining armor with Excalibur.

"Large-caliber weapons are but rather Vicki´s class. A woman who doesn´t read crochet tutorials, but using instructions for firearms." Henry couldn´t hide a smile now. Vicki with a crochet hook in hands.

This she would only use, when she might pull a monster out of its hole with it!

"I´ve only a handgun. World War Two. And it´s since then lying unused, wrapped and well oiled, in my cellar compartment. My largest weapon by its size is my sword! Possibly beheading will help. That´s what I can. Even pretty good!" Henry shot Vicki a smirk.

"At your time this had been the weapon of your choice. But if anybody will catch you with it, they´ll think it´s _Highlander real life in Toronto_ yet!"

"Would make a good excuse. I simply say that we´re filming a new episode and I´m still waiting for my colleague Duncan McLeod!" Henry grinned.

One of Toronto´s further secrets.

Immortals!

Henry wasn´t the only immortal being in Toronto. He wasn´t sharing his _vampire territory_, but the city contained a couple of other human _beings_, which were hiding among the mortals. Sean was one of his old...very old, even older than him...friends. The _Highlander_ movies were set up to hide the existence of an immortal species from the mortal eyes, creating a movie myth as humans tended to believe, that what they saw in movies can´t be real. And Augustus had his fingers knuckle deep in the pie!

"You´re never running out of quick-witted excuses, aren´t you, Henry?" Vicki looked at him with a wide smile.

"I´ve just more at hand than only the best break-up wisecracks. Wanna test that out, Vicki?

"Later on! I´d love to. But in the moment..."

"May I have that to understand as an invitation?"

"Henry!" she warned him.

Vicki forcefully pushed down the surge of her hormones at the imagination of what else of wisecracks Henry would have on hand. She wasn´t a fan of dirty talk, but almost five hundred years of experience might be worth a try. Not only these boring, hackneyed sayings...

But stop! She commanded herself. Concentrate on the mission ahead! Now Toronto had to be cleaned from a dirty killer!

_To be continued _


	4. Chapter 4 Oh Goodness, not again!

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 4**_

**Oh Goodness, not again!**

Mike was staring angrily at the report which he was holding in his hands. Then he threw a look at the collection of loose bones and remains of an only loosely connected skeleton. The victim was in a condition in which a forensic anthropologist would be needed for a reconstruction.

"Please don´t tell me now, there´s no decent, stinking normal perp, who is..." Mike directed to the table; "...responsible for this! Rajani, I beg you...I won´t have any need for such a freaky Vicki-Fitzroy-case again! All she gets her hands on, is getting out of hand anyway. Recently this freaked out Greek, who had suddenly snakes growing out of her head...and I only know this from bad movies, when any SciFi mutated snakes are crawling out of dead nostrils. But they are, thanks to the Gods, far, far away in the South in any abandoned desert hicktown. Not in good old Toronto! _My_ city!"

Mike had gotten a reddened head, a strange contrast to his cerulean eyes and the blonde hair. He seemed to be on the edge of desperation. Dr. Mohadevan felt pity for him, but there was no wavering of the facts, especially not in the forensics.

"Mike, I´m sorry. The traces on the bones and particularly on the remains of clothing; fiber abrasions, traces of rasping etc. are definitely verifying, that the man was killed by the attack of an animal. At the base of the neck are bite marks, which primarily opened the jugular vein, so that the victim died by the loss of blood. Further on...the larynx is completely crunched. The inner organs are lacking, so that I assume, that the unknown animal has fed them. There have been dragging trails in the tunnel...I can´t change it, Mike!" Dr. Mohadevan helplessly shrugged her shoulders.

"Do ya wanna tell me, that the same beast, what has left over all this disgusting drool...and the whole fucking tunnel is full with it...has grabbed the man, bitten him dead and rasped him off...!" She saw Mike facepalm in a gesture of helplessness.

"So it is...!"

Mike stared at her, beating with the report file on the table.

"How the hell shall I announce a manhunt for a slime puking giant beast...fish...Jurassic slug anything?! Crowley will hang me from the next window cross. And that belongs to the loony bin out in Mississauga! Animalistic killers are none of my business. This belongs to the Department of forest and hunting!" Mike angrily looked around in the laboratory. He wasn´t pissed of by Dr. Mohadevan, who was only doing her work, which she was doing damn good, but he´d have liked to let off steam at anything.

Vicki has it best! She has a punching ball and a sandbag at home!

Actually Vicki!

Just the right time to call her and blow her his opinion. Certainly Fitzroy was behind it again and Vicki naturally had immediately agreed in excitement! Damn vampiric brainwash strategy! That guy was always getting what he wanted.

And whom!

Mile pulled his cellphone from the pocket of his trousers and made a couple of steps away from the doctor, who had started further examinations of the remains. Not even the clean corpses, which normal murders caused. Sometimes even Dr. Mohadevan had to get her nose under control when a half rotten corpse came in. But these remains were not only giving off the usual smell of decay, but as if this won´t be worse enough, a penetrating stench of fermentation was hanging in the air of the laboratory. And it seemed to creep into every corner. The fact that the laboratory was of larger size than the tunnel, didn´t help to dilute it. Mike was wondering how Rajani could ever get used to all these disgusting smells. Was there any maximum concentration defined by law for this? For every usual substances which might show up at work, there were defined maximum concentration values at workplaces! But these substances, emanating from a corpse, had obviously been slipping from law´s attention! Mike shook his head, glad to get some distance now to the dissecting table.

Vicki looked up from the bout of upcoming monster killers and looked at her cell which was ringing. The caller-ID was showing Mike. Vicki sighed from the core of her heart. For a mere second she thought of letting his call fall on deaf ears, but then she decided against this. Probably it was anything of importance...

"Yep, it´s Vicki here! What´s up, Mike?!"

"Vicki, first of all I wanna tell you, that you shall let your hands off this case. That´s the business of the Department of fishery and science or that for forests and hunting! They care about friggin man-eaters in animal shape! And with _your_, I´m meaning yours, Henry´s and Coreen´s including! Got it? One fragmented corpse of this kind is enough! I don´t need you or Coreen or Fitzroy on the dissecting table too!" Mike barked into the phone. Some higher voice level won´t be wrong with Vicki to make things clear between them! Sometimes the PI tended to show a certain ignorance to his orders.

Henry, who could hear Mike without any effort, took the cell from Vicki´s hands. She thought that Henry wanted to protect her from Mike´s insistence, but this time Henry was up for something else, when he answered.

"For me, you won´t need a dissecting table, Detective, as I..."

"You aren´t immortal, Fitzroy! Even not you!" Mike shot back and Vicki could see, when Henry gulped down hard, before he countered.

"This I´m aware of! If you would be so polite, to let me finish my sentence, at least once...I´d have been able to tell you, what I meant! I wanted to say that Rajani would rather have need for a dust pan instead of a whole table, as...in case this monster rips me apart, there won´t be left over much more than a heap of dust or ashes...!"

"Good to know when at any time, I would get into the predicament to cope with a dead Fitzroy, a cardboard box would fit at all!"

"What did Mike say to you?" Vicki asked Henry, when he abruptly gave the cellphone back to her, while he was keeping his facial expression under control with utter effort. For the part of a second she saw blackness flashing thru his eyes. Had Mike...?

"MIKE! WHAT did you tell him? Dare to insult him and I will rip your ass off!" Vicki growled at him and she could Mike when he suppressed a growl with much effort.

Department for forest and hunting! Henry was thinking of his werewolf friends outside of London/Ontario in horror. Fortunately Mike didn´t know about his friends, the Heerkens family...

"What at all are you doing, anyway? Getting your curly heads together in an attempt to concoct a battle strategy? That ya better gonna blow from your cute, blonde skull, sweetheart !" Mike went on in a casual tone that turned into an offending one. Obviously he was up for a confrontation on any cost.

"Anything else, I won´t have to expect from you, Mike! If you won´t help me...good too! I´ll get that thing managed on my own! Eventually I´m no longer in the troupe, as you so eloquently put it! I´m a private eye by now!" she growled into her cell.

"Who´s hanging out with a vampire, who will, after it, serve you the next creepy case from his repertoire of fangs, freaks and consorts from the twilight zone! In order that you..." his voice level went down to a whisper, what didn´t help him thanks to Henry´s preternatural hearing; "...that you won´t jump off his list of blood donors."

Vicki was about to answer, when Henry slightly turned her cellphone to him.

"Vicki! Tell the detective...when he won´t get his heartbeat under control, it´ll kill him any day. Slowly ´gonna concerned of his health. " Henry smirked impertinently and let her wrist go.

"Did you listen, Mike? Or will I have to repeat this for you?"

"I´m not deaf! Gimme Fitzroy! Immediately!" Mike ordered. Vicki hesitatingly reached him over to Henry.

"Hello, Detective..." Henry´s voice was calm, sounding almost pleasant.

"Fitzroy! My health is none of your damn business!" Mike cursed. "Better care for the well-being of your blood donors!"

"That´s what I´m doing right now, Detective! You belong to them, forgotten?"

"How might I forget our little Tete â tete, more exactly...your fangs in my throat? Every fucking day, I´m looking in the mirror, that sappy scar reminds me of it, when I wrench my neck a bit!"

"When you are accepting my excuse for it, once again? I´ve been in an extraordinary situation, Detective Celluci. Normally..." Henry began.

"Know it! Normally you´re having yourself under control! But the..." Crap! Sometimes the scar was itching and stinging and unintentionally he felt for his neck.

"Normally for both sides it is quite a pleasant experience, when it happens in mutual agreement. Believe me, Detective Celluci." His voice had become lower and velvety.

His tone of voice caused a feeling now in Mike, what he won´t liked to have right now. Damn bastard! Once again you´ll not get your fangs into my neck! He didn´t want to think of other places.

"Fitzroy, I warn you! If you´re gonna go on a caper with Vicki..."

"You´ll stake me! I know!" Henry´s voice was laconic. The same old story, over and over again. How often did he hear that in his long existence?

Mike scratched on his scar, chewing on his lower lip. He looked at his clock. Only two hours left until sunrise. Vicki and Henry won´t be able to align or to wreak anything anymore. Not in this night.

Fitzroy would be concentrating onto the next night, when he didn´t want to let Vicki go all alone. What he obviously won´t do, he, who was always referring to his traditional upbringing. And Mike was putting his hope in it. It was the only hope which he had.

As long as he found no solution for the problem of this slippery, animalistic killer. Shooting was always good. Just in case bullets would do. As a kid he had read Jules Verne´s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and there Captain Nemo had said, that one can´t shoot an octopus with bullets, because their flesh is too soft, but they´ll have to get attacked with harpoons.

Harpoons! In his mind Mike saw himself, being armed with such a whale spear, confronting a high risen slime fish. Clubbing and stabbing, impaling and wrestling...and the monster would spit that disgusting, sticking stuff at them...

It was only the question, when and where this monster would be striking the next time. What rhythm of feeding does it have? Like Fitzroy every second night? Or would it be on the hunt again tomorrow night?

"Okay, Fitzroy! Promise me, that, in no case, you will Vicki let go down alone into that damn tunnel again or won´t let her crawl into anywhere!" Mike was putting some pressure on his last words by almost growling them. What this bastard was able to, he was able to since long too. Also without being bitten before. "And don´t dare to think of biting my neck anytime again!" Mike added, just to make it safe.

"Usually I´m preferring other parts of the body. But that´s one can talk about, Detective..." Henry answered and Mike couldn´t see the grinning of the vampire.

Vicki though.

"Henry...!" she whispered warningly, when the noise from the cellphone was indicating, that Mike was about to explode at the other end of the line. Finally it clicked and the connection broke off, when Mike controlled himself with much effort, not to throw his duty cell at the next wall.

"This Fitzroy drives me mad!" he cursed when he angrily stomped out of the laboratory. Dr, Mohadevan looked after him with a shaking of her head, then she turned back to the remains of the victim.

"Detective Celluci is an interesting person. And a challenge..." Henry said in a low voice.

Suddenly Coreen brought out a further squealing sound, seemingly a suppressed scream.

"Coreen, what is it?" Vicki looked with knitted brows at her assistant, while Coreen as sitting at her computer.

"Ms. Nelson, I´ve found a link here...a method to catch a hagfish and to destroy it! It´s written here; * _the hagfish is the final opponent of the fish mouth.._** * **that fits, when he feeds on fishes. Cycle of battle: * _It´s tail, at which end a mace is hanging, is beating around in circles, this he´s doing either clockwise or counterclockwise. One has to pull the hagfish out of his hole with a grappling hook, and then to beat on his heart, which occupies a section behind his head. Every time when one life is deducted, the beating direction of the tail is changing. After approximately seven hits he´ll be defeated and he says his final words:*_

"Which words_, _Coreen? That´s a fish, it won´t talk!" Vicki shook her head. What had her assistant brought up again?

"Here it´s written verbatim, I quote: *_You obviously don´t knowwwww, where you arrrrre, naïve tot. This issssland is your rate." *_

"Rate? Relation? When, then rather: your fate! Fate, Coreen, not a relationship!"

"But it´s written here. Uh...oh, probably he screams or roars, when he´s killed. Like the mandrake, when it´s pulled out of the ground...that´s cause people let that be done by a dog, sealing their ears with hurds, otherwise they´d falling prey to madness, hearing her scream. After this it is at someone´s willing!"

Henry couldn´t hide a smirk; "The mandrake or mandragora being to someone´s will? I´d rather say; after mandragora one is to the root´s will. That is and had been a strong narcotic. And I´m preferring women with an own will, not those, which only scream until they are made compliant"

"Henry! Am I right when I suggest, that you didn´t have a snack tonight? Is there your hunger speaking, because you´re extremely dwelling upon a subject, as it looks to me..." Vicki confronted him.

"I don´t have to have a nosh every night, when you´re meaning that. I only wanted to express by it, that I´m appreciating self-confident and strong-willed women nowadays. The women don´t exist to be the slaves of men, like in the past, but equal partners."

"Uh oh! Look! Emancipation has reached the vampire world! At least in bed...I´m only asking myself, how you are getting along with these women, relating to; I don´t know anymore who and what this had been!"

"My phenomenal charm!" Henry directed to himself, his face was brimming over with self-confidence and now Vicki started to grin.

"Henry? Ms. Nelson? Please! I´m directing to our currently problem!" Coreen broke the word flow. "So, the battle room: _The battle room is made of a large quadratic room with a four areas measuring pit, from which the tail of the eel pokes out. Above and below are two holes added. The hagfish is alternately looking out of these holes in the fight. *" _

_(_Annotation_: text between * and in italics is a quote from an online game. Source: website world wide web /wiki/Schleimaal. With special thanks to the writers of the game. I translated it as best as possible into English language, as the original source is German)_

"An arena, pit? Or the tunnel. The cubic measure does not fit completely. Above and below holes...well, probably like the entrance and exit for the rainwater..." Henry considered. "But nowadays...where might one get grapple hooks? Pirate ships are rather rarely seen by now."

"The firefighters have ceiling hooks, with which ceilings and cover panels are pulled down or opened in fires, to get to fire pockets. And the brother of my friend Wolfsbane from the University, she who accompanied me in the occultism semester...is a firefighter. And at the harbor they use hooks at long rods to maneuver boats or to lift hawser out of the water..." Coreen explained with a smile that was confident of victory.

"And what are you going to tell us with it...?" Vicki waved with her hand thru the air, let her finger circle around: "So you feeling able to...organize that?" That always sounded a bit skeptical from Vicki. Like always when it came to Coreen´s ability to purchase strange things.

"Borrowing! That´s way faster then when we will construct that ourselves and then we´ll have the security, that these things are solid enough!"

"I won´t be amused when such a hook breaks amidst use like a match. I´m only reminding of the flamethrower, Coreen."

"But the silver bullets have done, Ms. Nelson!" Coreen indignantly defended herself. "In any case these hooks might be useful! A hagfish is something soft in relation to a mammal. And to beat on a heart, until it won´t beat anymore...that sounds promising."

"The seven lives...oh well, Coreen...as long as it doesn´t have seven heads like a Hydra..." Vicki took off her glasses and grabbed for the base of her nose. A typical gesture of her when she was thinking about something intensely.

"Nine." Henry declared.

"What? Uhm...?"

"Nine. A Hydra has nine heads."

"Seven. Nine. Doesn´t matter. One is just enough, Henry! At least for me..."

"After what Dr. Mohadevan has said and what you´ve seen in the internet, this animal has only one head with tentacles and a gaping, razor-toothed mouth. God´s forgotten creatures!" Henry tried to bring the discussion down to a rather reasonable base again. It won´t be helpful to drift off in wild speculations.

"Or Astaroth´s forgotten creatures. Bad planning or bad construction. Also a demon, and may he even be so mighty, can be wrong..." Vicki mumbled. After what had happened in the beginning of their partnership career...a deadly drug pooped into existence by a nether demon in Astaroth´s duty...had lifted Vicki onto the same level of aversion against Astaroth like Henry. And it hadn´t taken her some hundred years, only a couple of weeks. Score One for the human side!

"Vicki, demons are fallen angels and as those, they can´t create real animals or life forms, cause they lack of the Anima, the soul and the breath of God, whose opponents they are...They can only create ghosts and nether demons, but which are, by their nature, inanimate..." Henry explained to her and his hand moved up in a reflex to the small silver cross, which he was wearing and his fingers were closing around it.

Strangely enough Mendoza had left it to him, it shot thru his mind for a mere second. Probably to remind him in the moment of death, of who is the almighty and in front of whom he will have to fall on his knees. Seconds before the sun would turn him into dust...

"But when hell is full of souls, then he might clad one of them into a corporeal shape and send it up into our world, Henry! Like Norman´s soul when he had sucked him into hell." Vicki countered because Henry´s argument didn´t look plausible to her.

"A soul which he had incorporated , is ripped from the carnal body. That happens to everybody who is sucked down or went down to hell! His or her souls is incorporated by the superior demon. He owns it like a part of a body, but cuz of this he can´t re-implant the souls into their body again. The ribbon that ties the soul to the body is torn by the dark forces and for the creatures of hell, it is impossible to reverse that. A stolen soul is food, power. First of all it´s power! Don´t forget that! And the forces of darkness are so greedy for nothing else but power, Vicki! They are junkies and they won´t stop, even when they have gotten their stuff. Then they wanna more and more..." Henry´s eyes turned bled black, when he looked at Vicki.

"But Angelique wanted to re-install her brother´s soul into his body, so that he would rise from the dead."

"With the help of the God of Death. Her brother wouldn´t have been more than a shadow of himself. Corporeal though, but only kept alive by the power of the Dark Duke Samedi, who would have incorporated his soul." Also one of these cases in which he had to save Vicki´s life, because of her staring always all alone. Her tendency of always taking matters in her own hands, could turn out dangerous when it came to mortals. But when it came to the forces of hell, it could turn into something worse than death...

"So like a string puppet or like someone who is running on the long leash or who´s hanging at life supporting machines. Alive as long, as nobody tears the plug out!" Vicki rubbed the base of her nose. "Why so is this guy called Duke Samedi? Samedie is French and means Saturday. Duke Saturday, hm..."

"In Voodoo, the Saturday symbolizes, like in Christianity, the day of the rest in the grave, so de facto the space or the time of resurrection. The transition. Duke Samedi is the connecting link between the world of the living and the world of the dead, he receives the passed away and accompanies and leads their souls into the underworld, when they get buried. By the same he can hinder someone from dying, as long as he denies to dig a grave for him. For this he normally demands a sacrificial offering."

"Which I was thought to become! Great! One life in exchange for the other!" Vicki growled. It had been Henry, who had kicked the Voodoo queen´s ass down to hell again, not her. It testified that she could always trust Henry with her life.

"So it mostly runs!" Henry closed a bit crabbily. "But now; our case! Coreen, can you get us these hooked rods until tomorrow evening, from this brother of your fellow student."

"I think so as she still owes me a favor!"

Vicki preferred it not to ask which kind of favor. The ways of Coreen were sometimes...strange.

"Good. Get all of the weapons, that you have. I´ll bring in my sword!" Henry, the undead version of Saint George, the dragon slayer... Good material for my next graphic novel, Henry thought. Maybe I should include the good Detective Celluci too!

"Then we should be there early..." Vicki began. Henry interrupted her when he threw in; "I can´t be there earlier than shortly after sundown, ya know!"

"Okay, quite sure! I meant after sundown of course! Henry! I didn´t meet you tonight for the first time!" she grinned at him, trying to joke around with him a bit, in an attempt to lighten his mood from tonight. "So...we have to get into the sewer or tunnel or whatever you prefer to call it...before the monster starts to be on the prowl. We´ll search a hiding place in the tunnel, best will be near to its...feeding...place. And you´ll be waiting outside, Henry, giving us the signal, when it´ll be coming and at the same time you´ll be cutting of its return path. I only hope that this...eel...doesn´t have any additional emergency exits at hand...or better...at the fin!" Vicki groaned.

"He should be too fat and too large for these small rainwater inlets. When you´re putting the height of the slime traces on the walls of the tunnel in correlation to his height, his diameter, than our monster relies on the tunnel entrance at the lake shore..." Henry thought and tried to remind, what he had seen inside the tunnel.

"I namely neither want, that it will escape us, nor that it´s suddenly appearing from behind!" Vicki meant in a warning undertone.

"Okay, I´ll pick you up here directly after sunset. That should be early enough!" Henry looked on his pocket watch.

**Toronto- After sunset**

The sun was setting finally below Toronto´s horizon. The last orange colored light reflexes on the surface of the Lake Ontario subsided, giving way to the dark shadows of the night. It was fairly cold, below 32°F, but for the Canadians it was rather...fresh. The inhabitants of Toronto were used to deep temperatures and cold late fall nights were normal. Even when now a first layer of snow had fallen.

The lake surface hadn´t been frozen now and a boat was driving away from the shore. A fisherman who wanted to control his nets. The lake was containing lots of fish species, among them salmons too, which had come in from the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River, just to swim upwards in the surrounding rivers to lie their eggs.

Deep below the chugging motor of the small fishing boat ,they were tracing their circles in the cool depth and darkness of the lake. Their calm swimming movements were abruptly disturbed, when a large pale shadow was appearing from nowhere. A long extended body was winding thru the darkness like a snake, pulsating fin seams were framing a, by daylight, pale light brown-grayish skin. A wide head with thick, sausage shaped tentacles, which were framing a razor-toothed mouth, that in this form with an uncountable amount of teeth would be a credit to a shark.

The fishes in the lake were splitting up in panic, when they were confronted by the giant and completely foreign creature. Alone the mouth were showing them, that this was a predator, who was roaming thru their territory. And a predator meant only one thing:

To flee. Or to be fed.

The unusual creature looked like it had jumped right out of a bad science fiction movie, for sure it was punished by nature with ugliness. The fishes were chasing away, some watched from a safe distance when the predator swam off to finally disappear in the darkness of the lake. Today they didn´t seem to interest the stranger, who was moving to his own target.

He had allowed himself only some noshes. Ahead of him were hunting grounds that were way more attractive. Within the last two weeks he had explored and conquered a new territory, where it was much easier to get to food than to ambush salmons, carps and breams in the darkness. These were fast and warily and his thing were rather passive food sources, though. In his home, the Northern Atlantic Ocean, where he had been feasting on caught fishes in trawl nets, it was winter pause now. The Atlantic was too stormy for this kind of fishery in winter. And limited fishing seasons were restricting his plows too. But the Lake Ontario and the surrounding areas were a rich source of food.

Above on the boat, the fisherman was ranting and raving, when he pulled up his net, just to find out that it had a large gap again! The second one in only one and a half week. The few fishes in the net tonight won´t be even enough to cover the costs for the fuel and the energy from the generator on board of the boat.

"Goddamn Crap! That fucking net is damaged again! Slowly I´m asking me, what that means! What the hell rips such holes of garage gate size into the nets? When I´ll get my hands on him..." That with the garage gate was too much pushing, but the hole was large enough, so that, but a handful of fishes, had escaped who had been caught in it before.

The fisherman let loose a whole flood of curses, while he was completely pulling up the net and then putting the mingy catch into boxes on deck. The cold night below 32°F was at least sparing him the electrically powered cooling in the boat´s belly. His colleague started to move the boat slowly, steering it in the direction of the outer harbor of Toronto.

The predator was soundlessly approaching the lake shore, swimming along it. He was orientating to the smells and the taste of the water, which was different in every place of the lake. Temperature, growth of plants, streaming and inlets from the Humber and other small creeks were changing the composition of the lake water in nuances. Environmental protection areas, defined by the government, were protecting the water from bad influences in order to secure the quality for drinking water and the catch of healthy fishes.

**Toronto Metropolitan Police**

Mike was shutting down his computer. A pile of files was lying on his desk, to which now the case of the dead from the rainwater drain in Hammersmith Avenue had been added.

There were approaching steps and Mike lifted his head.

That too! She´s the last one I´m needing right now! Mike thought, when he pulled on his coat and positioned his gun holster. A movement, now rather being a reflex, which said him, that his Glock9mm was at its place and ready for duty. The door was opening...

Staff Inspector Crowley.

"Detective Celluci!"

"Madam..." her cutting, icy voice when she addressed him by his ranking and name, was telling him, that the following conversation would be uncomfortable.

"Detective Celluci, I´m expecting, that you´ll solve this case of an unidentified corpse as fast as possible! Before the press gets wind of it! And by asap I´m understanding latest tomorrow evening! By the way..." she directed to the coat which he was wearing. "Can you allow yourself to finish right now? Until now you haven´t delivered any suspect, I´d be able to announce a manhunt on!" she taunted. Her gray eyes were like ice when she looked at him derogatorily. She was emanating more cold than any killer with which Mike had to cope with.

"I´m right on my way to new investigations in this case. I´m about to talk with some witnesses from the surroundings of the crime scene, to get more information. You´re seeing so, Staff Inspector Crowley, that I´m definitely not on my way home.!" Mike bit back.

"Good, Detective! I´m respecting your results!"

"Yes, Ma´am!"

He breathed out, when she left his office, waiting until she had disappeared into her own office, before he left the department. Those simple, little words like please or thanks were seemingly unknown to her, he thought. Even some killers or suspects were capable of normal human politeness. Her character had more resemblance to that of an US Army Navy Seals drill sergeant, than anything else. In her eyes, her detectives, lieutenants and officers were barely more than subordinates, measured by the percentage of results within a certain time! According to this she treated them.

"Did you ever ask yourself, why everybody likes to see you moving ya ass outta here?" he mumbled, when he could be certain, that his boss was out of hearing range. He let out a deep breath of relief when he started his car to drive to Fitzroy´s domicile. The sun would be setting in a few minutes and when he´d hurry up, he wouldn´t miss him when Fitzroy left the house. With some luck, Fitzroy´s steps would be leading him right into Vicki´s office. Less luck meant that the bastard would take a little detour, to allow himself a nosh...hem...sip between his fangs. And he didn´t feel much intention to watch the vampire eating up one of these young chicks. The fangs at her throat, his hand at...he even didn´t want to think about, why these young girls got off with him. Vicki forthrightly called them meal-on-legs.

Fangs at the throat.

Every time Mike reminded it, a cold shower was driving down his spine. Fitzroy´s hot, snarling breath at his throat, seconds, before his teeth were digging with brutal force into the curve of his neck. Had been an all eradicating pain, when these fangs had been ravaging his flesh like those of a predator and Fitzroy had been sucking at his wound like a maniac...

He wasn´t up for such an experience anytime again!

Mike parked in some distance from the house entrance and switched off his front lights. Meanwhile it had become dark and he turned his view upwards, to the front side of the building. There were lights on on the fourteenth floor, but he couldn´t tell which of them belonged to Fitzroy´s penthouse home. I should have paid more attention to the orientation in the hallway last time I´ve up there...then I´d be knowing where exactly his rooms are lying. He had been so busy with Fitzroy, that he had missed it to throw a look out of the windows to check onto which building vis-â-vis they went.

Mike grabbed the camera, that was lying beside him on the passenger´s seat, he regulated the adjustments, using the optical viewfinder in zoom mode to check the fourteenth floor. Windows lit up, dark windows, then windows in which suddenly light was splaying upwards from below.

Blinds! Blinds which were moving up, because...

...the sun had set.

Good luck! Fitzroy was outta his little bed. So it won´t take all too long, until he´d be appearing downstairs. Probably cause of their case, Vicki had still lighted a fire under Fitzroy´s royal vampire ass!

Mike was waiting a couple of minutes, then he saw when Fitzroy´s Jaguar came out of the basement garage and pulled out into the traffic. The direction he took, would be leading him to Vicki. Mike started to follow him thru the evening traffic.

Vicki skeptically looked down onto the pile of _equipment_ that Coreen had put in her office. Secretly Vicki marveled at the organization talents of her assistant.

"Coreen, tell me...did you raid the fire station? If so, one can only hope that no fire starts in Down Town tonight!" Vicki looked at her assistance with a shake of her head. Hooked rods, an ax and something that was looking like a giant net were lying in front of her. For a fish a net was fitting, but what they were about to hunt down, had the size of a medium sized shark and Vicki was asking herself, if the material would be resisting those teeth, Rajani had been talking about.

"Are you sure, this might be strong enough?" she directed to the net.

"Ms. Nelson, the friend of my fellow student is catching even large animals with it. Then also the Myxine thing won´t escape. And when it comes to raid; it´s all borrowed!" Coreen pushed her hands in her hips, which tonight were covered by a black jeans and not by a fashionable goth skirt. The jeans even showed up with some holes at places, which were subject to more severe wear-out. So Coreen was about to apply herself to the thing with full engagement.

"And this jeans belong to her punk brother?" Vicki grinned.

"Nope! It´s mine! And before you will ask; yes! I´m wearing trousers too!, Ms. Nelson." Coreen replied the smile and moved her hips like in a dance.

"Okay...okay..." Vicki cleared her throat. "Henry will be showing up in a moment and then we can get started. We should only taking care of getting our battle equipment into his Jaguar without attracting attention..." By her last words, she especially had a certain detective from the TMP in mind. "Goodness! I´m only hoping that Henry will not additionally bring in a knight´s armor!"

"Guess...as he isn´t the tallest one and descending from the 16th century, he might be still fitting into one..." the goth perkily added without any restraints.

"Coreen!" Vicki looked at her with knitted brows. Her assistant was...

"What´s so wrong about it? I only meant...people of that age...and I don´t refer to him being almost some five hundred years old...have been of a bit smaller figure. That´s a historically proven fact, Ms. Nelson! You should know...as you´ve eventually had taken history class at the university!"

"Don´t let that be heard by Henry!"

"Ms. Nelson. The size of a man is not measured by his body height, but by the greatness and honesty of his heart! And by this you should finally give up your restriction when it comes to Henry! I really don´t know, why you´re so..." Coreen didn´t care about the fact, that they had a case to solve, when now she got the option to tell Vicki, that she should finally give in to such an amazing man like Henry. But Vicki didn´t let her go on, interrupting her the hard way, what Coreen made sigh in frustration.

"Stop! You´re slipping off the path, Coreen! We have a case to solve in order..."

"To rescue Toronto from a slime dripping, drooling mega fish monster killer! I know!" Coreen answered and shook her head no, adding: "By the way; a Storm Trooper armor would be much better. Less weight!"

Thankfully Vicki took up the point, glad to get away from the always repeating theme of her starting a love affair with Henry finally, who was romancing her, since they had met the first time. So she meant:

"You...you´re meaning..." she waved with her hand midair. "...these guys from Star Wars? Those, who arrested Princess Leia?" Vicki wasn´t a fan of science fiction movies, but Star Wars was something what no human on his planet could have missed anyway in life. Not with nine movies...

"Yeap! They have super light weighted, ultra resistant harness, way better than this Kefla, of which the police vests are made."

"Such a police protection vest has still saved my life. Ain´t that bad so, when even heavier probably."

Vicki took the ax up from her desk, trying the weight and searching for the specific balance point. Then she made some flourishes, cutting an imaginary opponent in slices and Coreen stepped back by instinct.

"Whoa!"

In this moment the door opened and Henry came in.

"Hooh! Carefully, Vicki!" Henry shouted, when the blade of the ax whirled around and was coming threateningly near to him. But Vicki pulled the flourish down and Henry was so fast, that nothing happened to him.

"Do you believe to get hold of the eel that way, Vicki?" he directed to the lowered ax. "That´s no Gorgon and..."

"You´re having your sword, Henry...!" she countered. "And before you´re coming up with the idea, to refer to my bad eyes: With the Medusa you didn´t complain anything too and the beast might be that large, that even I can see it!"

"I was barely able to, as I had been petrified just about in that moment, Vicki!"

"What you still would be also, Henry...when I wouldn´t have beheaded Elena!"

"Vicki!"

"Ms. Nelson!" both were admonishing her at the same time unisono.

"So! I´m ready to get started!" Coreen squeaked. "What´s about both of you?"

"Let´s go" Vicki and Henry answered at the same time.

Coreen wrapped the rods into a large cloth and Henry took the bundle from her, reaching her his car keys. Vicki shoved the net into a sports bag and then they went to his car. Coreen opened the luggage trunk in which she saw the sword and Henry placed the bag and the bundle with the ceiling hooks beside it. Vicki entered the passenger´s seat in the front and Henry bent nearer to Coreen, who was still standing beside him.

"We´re in company!" he whispered. "But don´t turn around!"

"Who´s it?"

"Who else? Detective Celluci. He´s parking a bit back in the street, but I still noticed him, when he was following me up to here. Guess, we´ll see him again soon, when we´ll be in the tunnel! He even can´t let it be...!"

"Oh man, that does it!I only hope that he has his rubber boots on! That´s to become a real mess!" Coreen grinned .

"I guess, he will just shaft us, because we´ll disregard a police line." Henry meant when he went to the driver´s door.

"Or he wanna meet the monster personally, at least once before we´ll hash it to a pulp. So he´ll get his beloved evidences." Coreen sat down on the back seat.

Mike observed what the three of them were doing in the street, then he was following them in some distance. Not to slowly, just not to get lost of them, but not too fast too.

Tailor´s school! Bullshit!

He wasn´t doing this for the first time.

It´s just the question, what Fitzroy has put in his luggage trunk at all, he thought. And where they were driving to. All that stuff didn´t look as if it could be used for any witness interrogation, but if someone was about to apply more massive arguments.

When the bastard would get Vicki into trouble again, he would brush him off thoroughly this time.

_To be continued_


	5. Chapter 5 Dark, dark and slippery

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 5**_

**Dark, dark and...slippery**

Mike cursed in a low voice, when he had to pay attention in a steep curve not to slip against the curb. At the crossroad a crust of half frozen snow slush on ice had been building up, shoved together by the other cars before. Such corners were trappy.

Cause of this, Fitzroy was way ahead of him than before and we was asking himself, how the vampire could have seen this trappy corner earlier. But the bastard had a far better sight in darkness than any human. Plus he was obviously driving, since there were cars, so some decades longer than him.

Mike carefully accelerated to shorten the distance again. They weren´t far from the lake shore anymore and now Mike could guess, where to Fitzroy was driving.

"Damn bastard!" Oh, he loved this expression. Bastard. Fitzroy is a bastard, there was nothing to joggle about. "The tunnel is locked up, Your Highness! So you´re right up to disrespect a highly official police line, when you´re dragging Vicki into the tunnel. And when I want, I can bring you into lots of trouble, _friend_!" Mike grinned, then he parked his car in some distance in a gateway and he stayed in the car for a moment, so they couldn´t discover him directly. He still could be following the three of them, now that he knew, where they wanted to go.

Henry parked his Jag, opened the luggage trunk and then he exchanged his new booties against the Wellingtons. Vicki and Coreen still had equipped themselves with slime resistant footwear. Henry threw a look up the street and he saw Celluci´s car parking in a gateway like a resident. Cover! But only when one hadn´t been discovered though before, he thought with a smile.

Mike, Mike, you still have to learn a lot, when you´ll trick me, Henry thought. At all, what does that mean? He wasn´t up for the companionship of the detective, but when he was here yet, he might accompany them. He would even learn, what was going on here.

Henry reached Vicki the bag with the net, Coreen took the ax, which was wrapped in a cloth and he took the bundle with the ceiling hooks and his sword.

"Okay..." he looked down the street, his nostrils were widening to catch the scent. "Our opponent seemed not to be here yet. Good! Vicki, you´re going into the tunnel with Coreen...Though it´s not overwhelming, but I´m taking a hiding place at the entrance and ´ll tell you, when the monster shows up. I´ll cut off its return path. So it can´t get out anymore...Then I´ll be at your position immediately. We might not do this any other way...!"

Henry didn´t feel comfortable with sending Vicki and Coreen ahead, but he was the only one who probably couldn´t be smelled by the hagfish. And he was fast enough to be at their side, when the monster got stuck in the trap.

The three of them were approaching the tunnel entrance, which was blocked by the yellow police ribbon. _Crime scene- no access._ Vicki was diving thru under it, avoiding to touch it. Henry bent down, sniffing at it. A lot of traces of human scents.

Probably very tempting for the monster...

...which had tasted human flesh once before.

Henry went few steps into the tunnel, listening and sniffing with concentration.

It smelled of old death, moldy moisture and stale water and slime. No heartbeat, no smell of snow or of fresh water from the lake. No indication that the beast had still been here tonight.

He waved to Vicki and Coreen.

"It isn´t here..." he directed to the depth of the sewer. "I´ll give a signal..." he whispered.

"Which one? Just, that we´ll know..."

"I´ll...bark shortly. An alleged animal won´t look suspicious for our opponent..."

Vicki and Coreen nodded and in the light of Vicki´s Mag Lite they carefully entered the dark tunnel. The beam of light was jumping over the walls and the ground and after a short time they had reached the place, where last they had found the dead. The animal remains were still scattered there. The police was only interested in human victims. Animals were, if so, a case for the animal protection or the Department of forest and hunting.

Vicki and Coreen were covering their noses and mouths with their hands until they had gotten used a bit to the stench.

"Whoo, what a stench...like puking. Sorry, but it´s true though..." Coreen whispered in disgust.

"Yeap, probably gastric juice with food remains..." Vicki agreed in a low voice, than she searched for a place where they could hide. The tunnel walls went straight forward and finally in some distance ahead, Vicki could see a niche. She carefully lit into it. Fortunately the ground was dry to some degree and all of it free from this slime at least. On the opposite was a niche too, in which a small tube was ending, but it hadn´t any water yet, as it was snowing outside.

"Coreen, crouch down in there! I´m on this side here..." Vicki whispered in an almost inaudible voice. She wasn´t certain, if Henry could hear them, and more important...if the hagfish won´t hear them too early...

Coreen was looking into the niche more than skeptically, when she saw the drain tube.

"Hopefully that´s no house drainage! I don´t wanna get a shower of poop!" she grumbled.

"Don´t make a fuss! This sewer is only for rainwater. There´s no poop led into the lake in here...!" Vicki ordered. "The only poop in here will be from our hoggish slime fish."

Vicki was pressing into the niche, the ax in her hand. Her back was almost touching the ceiling, but they had to go thru this now. Coreen was hiding in her own corner and her hands were holding the net. She tried to breathe as flat as possible, but when she would continue with it for a longer time, she would grow dizzy probably. Her heart was in her throat. Even Henry would hear it...

Not to talk about this monster.

They were sitting here like baits on a serving tray. Hopefully Henry would really be as fast as promised!

Hopefully she would have the bravery to stay near enough in the key moment, to throw the net over the beast. Probably she hadn´t exercised before anyway, Vicki thought for a mere moment. But there was no time now, to be concerned about things done before or not.

Outside, Henry had been crouching behind a small wall, which separated the built-up area of the shore zone against the shore. He would have liked a roof to keep the surroundings in sight from above, but for this he would have had to cross gardens nearby, what was by far attracting too much attention. And worse; he would need too much time to get into the tunnel fast. He was literally melting into the darkness and Mike was standing at the side of the street, somewhat undecided, his Glock9mm in his hand.

It was silent and only a weak wind from the lake was moving the snowflakes thru the air. Mike breathed deeply while he tried to sense anything in the dark street. Fitzroy was nowhere visible, like sucked up by the ground, after he had seen them near the tunnel entrance for the last time. Vicki and Coreen had obviously gone into the tunnel and Mike didn´t know what do do now alone; follow them or rather searching for Fitzroy?

Henry was warily watching the water surface. The wind drove fine ripples over it and small waves were clapping at the shore with a low noise, breaking and flowing back. In a storm the surface of the giant Lake Ontario could turn into a storm-lashed ocean of freshwater, that wasn´t less dangerous than the open ocean.

Suddenly his sensitive eyes discovered a movement, that could neither be caused by the wind nor by the steady rhythm of the waves...

...anything was moving below the water surface in direction of the shore and when the anything reached the beach, a light colored fin seam broke thru the surface like an extended shark´s dorsal fin. Henry unintentionally hold his breath, though he didn´t need that really.

A glistening, extended body of some pale-brownish color shoved up onto the moist sand. Some eight feet long, thick and rounded. When the creature was lifting its head, to look around, Henry could see a chunky head with thick, glistening eyes, behind them, anything was lying what looked like gills. Thick tentacles were extending from the head, which were squirming like worms.

Most of all, it reminded Henry of a Gorgon in eel-shape.

The animal was straightening up more, pulling its mouth open. A ring of razor-sharp teeth, surrounded by bulging lips, which were dripping with thick and glittering, long strands of slime. A disgusting hissing was coming from the open funnel of teeth, when the creature squirmed his head from one side to the other to search the surroundings for food or an enemy showing up. Henry´s eyes turned black and his fangs extended, when he reacted to the threat in a natural way. With some effort he swallowed down an animalistic growl, diving behind the mural crown in a flash.

The hagfish lowered its head and he moved up the beach in a high speed, over the slim pathway of the shore and then up the scarp, where the tunnel entrance was lying. For his mass he was damn fast, when he moved in direction of the tunnel.

Mike was standing on the lane, he saw anything coming up from the waterside, so fast, that he could barely recognize anything but a giant, extended body which disappeared in the scarp.

"What the fuck...!" he cursed. "That does not really exist! At...oh crap. Cuzzo! Mike was slithering down the street, he could catch a last view on what looked like a tail, before it disappeared in the tunnel.

A loud barking was sounding thru the night.

Cuzzo! Now some curs are freaking out in the neighborhood, too! Mike thought.

Vicki and Coreen twitched inside the tunnel. The long time of waiting had made them nervously and Vicki gasped;

"It´s coming, Coreen! It´s coming! Let´s go! Be careful!"

Mike saw anything dashing through the darkness in a whoosh, following behind the anything-beast and disappearing in the tunnel. He slithered down the last distance in the street, stopping dead in his tracks and he had to grab for a hold at the scarp, in an attempt to prevent himself from slipping.

Ice and a thick trail of this stinking slime were leading into the tunnel. When Mike had caught his steps, he slipped into the tunnel, whose gate was still hanging in its broken hings in a strange angle. Cold, moist air and a disgusting smell were piercing in his nose, making their way up into his brain. Mike choked, gulping down a knot of nausea. His left hand was holding his own Mag Lite, his right hand was holding his Glock9mm, with the safety released, when he hasted forward while he avoided to step into the sticky mass, that was everywhere on the ground.

Ahead of him, he heard voices and a hissing, that was swelling up to a roar from time to time. The billowy noise was hammering in his eardrums from all sides, when he was approaching the chaos, covering the last distance...

Vicki and Coreen jumped off their hiding places, when the giant body of the hagfish appeared in front of them. Vicki became aware, that they won´t have a chance to reach the exit because the beast was blocking their way back. Just in case...

"THROW the net, Coreen!" Vicki shouted when she was hauling off to strike with the ax.

The monster was highly lifting up his body, staring at them with glittering eyes, its mouth was wide open and slime was dripping from the teeth and the mouth, when it shot forward with an enraged hiss...in Vicki´s direction... Obviously it felt totally certain about its prey, because the attack was so determined, that there seemed to be no fear behind.

"THROW the...NET, Coreen!" Vicki shouted again when she hit with the ax. The blade was cutting into that part of the hagfish, which seemed to be the neck. The monster roared and blood was gushing from the wound, when Vicki pulled back the ax to strike again.

"Too...HIGH! It´s too high!" Coreen shouted. "The tunnel ceiling...I don´t get in between!"

The wound didn´t slow down the beast that much, because it moved forward and Vicki had to jump back, without sight. In this moment, Henry was there and was cutting down into the tail from behind with the sword. Blood splashed around when the tail fin was cut off and Henry immediately followed up, cutting down again into the rear segment.

With a roar the hagfish turned away from Vicki, throwing its mass halfway around and now it attacked Henry. Its head was shooting forward, its mouth was wide open. Teeth and slime...

"Yeah! Yeah! Come on! COME HERE, YOU stinking heap of SLIME!" Henry shouted to distract the monster from Vicki. The hagfish actually turned away from Vicki, to turn to this snarling, growling little heap of a human being. Henry moved back to steps, jumping to the side, when the mouth full of razor-sharp teeth was shooting forward in his direction, ready to bite down. Henry was so fast, that the attack ran into empty space and the head was diving deeper by it. That was what Henry had intended.

He was hauling off to strike again with the sword and in a speed, which only he could manage, the blade went down into the back of the monster, cutting thru flesh and muscles. Blood and slime were welling from the wound and Vicki was hitting into the rear segment again with her ax. The beast roared with pain, throwing its head around and it spit a full load of slime in Vicki´s direction.

Right in this moment the net was flying from Coreen´s hands, wrapping itself around the head and the front segment.

"Well thrown, Coreen!" Vicki shouted from her position.

The creature was shaking wildly, roaring, squirming and then writhing its head and body over the ground in an attempt to strip off the net.

Henry literally shot forward, striking again and he grabbed the net from behind, to fix the hagfish to the ground, who was sticky from slime and blood. Slime, that now seemed to be welling directly out of the skin in incredible amounts, as if he wanted to escape his hunters by it.

Henry was pulling with full strength, but the eel was equally strong, so that an unequal tug-of-war was developing between him and the vampire. When the hagfish seemed to get it, to what this was turning out, he reared highly up in a single effort, his head banged against the ceiling and Henry, who has hanging at his side, was almost pulled from his feet, upwardly...

With a curse he let go, his reflexes safely bringing him to the ground again and he rolled away to get out of the range of head and teeth, which were wildly lashing around. Henry was back on his feet immediately, hauling off to strike with his sword, to keep off the raging hagfish, which was attacking him like a cat going for a mouse.

A row of shots was banging through the tunnel.

The staccato from a Glock9mm.

Henry had still heard when Mike was shooting with his gun, so nobody needed to tell him who was the shooter. Every weapon had its individual sound.

Henry threw himself to the ground to escape the bullets, which Mike was firing wildly at the hagfish. In an attempt to end the beast or, at least, to distract it from Vicki and Henry.

"Mike! It´s of no use, when you´re shooting _me_!" he shouted at the detective. Henry came up to his feet again, striking newly.

Coreen was ramming one of the ceiling hooks into the chest of the monster like a lance, but it was rearing up high in the air, so that the rod was pulled from her hands.

"Where do you have your goddamn heart, you monster...?!" she screamed, taking a second spear, driving it into the body. At the same time she had to keep attention, so that she won´t be covered with a load of that stinking paste, when the monster turned around.

"Goddamned...!"

Mike was standing in the tunnel, his weapon was aiming at the monster. He had spread his legs, pressing his feet to the slippery ground, to get hold and steadiness for the shooting. His right hand was ramming a new magazine in his handgun and then he pulled the trigger.

Three, four shots were banging through the narrow tunnel, so loud, that it almost made Henry´s sensitive hearing burst and for seconds he could hear a drumming noise. What the heck, why must Celluci shoot his gun so near to his head? With a groan he jumped to the side, cutting down again into the back-neck area with his sword. But the tissue was so elastic, that despite of his strength, he didn´t hit the spine bones but only the muscles.

"CAREFULLY!" Henry shouted, when the eel turned around and was shooting forward so fast, that Mike was only two or three steps away finally. Mike ducked down, throwing halfway around when he tried to jump out of the way.

In this moment the mouth of the creature opened widely, there was a choking sound and Mike thought it to be a sign, that his bullets had hit target, successfully causing any damage... Damn, he even didn´t know what fucking organs this friggin monster had, but anywhere should be some... He never had time to come to any result with it, when...

...an incredible amount of slime was shooting out of the throat, when the head of that slime bag shot forward. A thick stream. Gallons of a stinking, sticky, yellowish-white mass was pouring on the ground in front of Mike and...

...over Mike!

"What the fuck! CRAP! Shit! That fucking stinks! Damn, why EVER ME? I don´t get it! Shitbag! Rompicazzo! I. KILL. YOU!" Mike was screaming like a stuck pig, then he was cursing faster than any of the three was able to follow. In Italian, English and in a couple of languages, which cusses he obviously had sucked up with mother´s milk.

He whirled around, feeling how all that slime was running down his back and penetrating to places, where it definitely didn´t belong to! His coat was...shortly said...butchered...

Mike lifted his gun again, shouting at the raging hagfish and now it didn´t matter anymore what might happen additionally. Before Henry, Vicki or the hagfish least at all got anything, Mike had grabbed into the net with one hand. He let himself being pulled up from the raging beast, pressing the muzzle of his gun at what had to be the head. His finger barely found any hold in the slippery meshes and the brew was soaking through his sleeves when he pulled the trigger.

Three, four, five shots.

The grip of his Glock9mm was hammering into the heel of his hand, when he was firing the mounted shots and he might have screamed from pain and rage, but instead he was triumphantly shouting:

"TAKE THAT! AND THAT! AND THAT!" when the bullets went directly into the slime dripping, stinking scull.

The hagfish screamed, hissed, roared and twitched with every hit, trying to shake off the enemy in agony, but Mike was grimly clinging to the beast, though he was wildly thrown around, emptying his magazine. Then he let go, more falling to the ground than he was jumping off. Coreen was ramming another two of the hooked rods into the body and Vicki was cutting down with the ax from behind. Henry hauled off to strike with the sword...

Mike was landing on the ground and the hagfish reared up, his roaring had turned into screams now. Than it lost its balance and smashed down on the ground.

...the sharp blade of Henry´s sword was cutting thru the neck muscle and with a precision, that was only coming from a years long training, Henry was hitting with another strike into the same wound. He felt when bones or gristle was giving in under the blade and the head with the drooling mouth was tilting forward, while the rest of the hagfish monster was collapsing backwards. Mike and Henry jumped back, when the head was landing on the ground of the tunnel with a disgusting, smacking sound, the eyes were rigid and widely opened. A sea of blood and paste was spreading around the cadaver and much more stench made the four fighters retching.

"God! Is that disgusting!" Mike choked and turned away, stumbling a couple of steps away, being nauseated by it. He dragged and plucked at himself, his fingers were completely covered of this thick slime and he was standing in the tunnel, cussing in a row. He shook his hands, his arms and his body in an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of this disgusting stuff. Wouldn´t have Henry felt sorry for him in this situation, he might have started to laugh out loud about the picture, that Mike was in his rage and desperation. But the poor detective was covered from his neck, over his arms down to his butt with the stinking, viscous liquid.

"I. HATE! THAT!" Mike cursed. "And I hate this fucking tunnel and generally! Why did I let you pull me into this shit?" He looked angrily at Henry and Vicki, being on the edge of tears.

"Detective, none of us has pulled you into this! It has been you, who followed us. I didn´t invite you to participate in our little floor-the slime-event..." Henry explained with a voice as friendly as possible. He had to brace himself, just not to answer Mike in the same aggressive tone, in which Mike was facing him...once again.

"Fitzroy, you know right, that I won´t let Vicki get into that friggin shit all alone! When this slimebag would have hurt her...I won´t ever forgive me that!" Mike hissed. He hadn´t been there once when Vicki had been hurt.

"Do you have such little trust in me? That you won´t trust me with protecting Vicki? Do you even believe that I´d have Vicki let that all alone? Even, when I know how stubborn she is..." Henry looked at him and his eyes turned darker.

"You have..." Mike began. "You have let Vicki alone once..." Henry could see the uncertainty in his face, this mix of anger and concern.

"Just you´re alluding to the Fulton case, Mike..." Henry called him by his first name with full intention now, to get some closeness, not any familiarity, but to generate a kind of relationship to the detective; "...I didn´t know before, what Vicki had been up to! But she was safe with me, until you´ve been back then, Mike!"

Mike was staring at the smaller man, his lower lip twitched and it was working in his face. Anger, confusion and uncertainty were running over it. Fitzroy was right. He had protected Vicki, had been caring for her and looking after her, had Rajani called in. so that she could treat Vicki. Normally I should be thankful to him. But he couldn´t jump over his shadow that easily. He still had to bite on that thing with this Inquisitor.

Fitzroy was still watching him.

Mike swallowed, breathed heavily and there was a tremble in his chest.

"I should drive home..." Mike mumbled and he grabbed with his right hand at his back, where a sticky, stinking layer of slime was sticking to his body. It was the question if he would ever get rid again of this stuff...and especially the adhering stench.

"I definitely need a shower..."

In disgust he rubbed his hand at the side of his coat, with little success.

Mike turned around, seeing himself suddenly being confronted by Vicki again.

"WHAT? What do you want, Vicki? This case is finished. I don´t believe that we should inform the rest of the precinct, that in here a cadaver of such a deviant mutation is lying in this tunnel. The next heavy rain might wash that shit..." he hauled off in a wide bow; "...down into good old Lake Ontario..."

"So ya having an unsolved case again, Mike. What´s about the corpse?" she reminded him. Her ex-cop instinct wasn´t to be switched off so easily.

"We´ll clear up his ID. Rajani will notice anything in her report, that he´d been fallen when he searched for his dog and he had been dying by hypothermia finally. And then any animals fed on him. Every sewer is full of rats and now and then even foxes are showing up in this quarter. The might be hungry in winter..." Mike shrugged his shoulders and added helplessly; "There´s nothing better coming to my mind. It´s crap, but nobody wants to know the truth. Crowley would call me being mad. She´s even looking twice at me, Vicki! Ya know, how she is."

"I know Mike, I´ve often enough gotten in trouble with her!" Vicki confessed.

Crowley had commented and criticized every of their cases. There hadn´t been any damn single case of murder, when she hadn´t criticized their work and their investigations. Though or especially because of her and Mike´s success. This boss-bitch had been a real pain in the ass and Vicki was glad to be her own boss now. That she finally chucked in her police work, when her eyesight had gotten worse, depended on Crowley to a good load too. To be looked at as being half a portion and a handicapped cause of her bad eyes and her night blindness, who only pocketed her cash...that wasn´t what she had any need for...!

And damn it! She didn´t need anybody´s pity! From nobody!

Mike had given up in handing her out any advice, related to her condition.

"_Mega dosage of vitamin C and...I´ve googled it, Vic" "So, you have googled it..."_

All what he had done well meaning, was only leading to her reacting in being pissed off.

Henry was kindly taking her as she was, when he even criticized her stubbornness. But at least he didn´t play in the lowest-league-of-pity. When also she was asking herself, when he would gonna separate from her...probably latest, when she´d be completely blind.

"Vic, we are ready in here! I´ll drive. Looking that I´ll get this slime poop off me again! Goodness, I´m stinking like a whole dirt bucket full of puke! No, not a single bucket...a whole goddamn barrel full of it!" he cursed and dropped his handgun in a plastic bag. He didn´t want to stick his holster with it. Then he´d have to explain why he´d need a new shoulder holster. Every new part of equipment needed, needed an explanation beside a written request. Police´s daily routine. Requests, form sheets, reports...

When he would get out of his coat now, he´s confronted by the question, how to get that thing into his luggage trunk, without messing up the rest of his clothing with that slime. To throw it away or giving it to the cleaner service...who would ask him, what the heck that stuff is...

A llama has spit at me...sounded reasonable.

No sense to rack his brains about it! He just wanted to go home yet. Probably he´d be about to spend the rest of the night in the shower, until he´d get that crap rubbed off...

Mike nodded to Henry, who cleaned his sword and Coreen tried to pull the improvisational lances out of the cadaver. Henry helped her with it, because now the body of the hagfish denied to let go of the weapons again. Vicki shot a short look after Mike when he stomped in direction of the exit without any further word. Then she turned to her own weapon.

The cold air and the, now icy, wind from the lake were a shock, but also a liberation after the moist-musty air and the emetic stench in the rainwater drain. Mike was coughing, clearing his throat to be able to breathe again. By now it had stopped snowing and the light of the few lanterns in the street lit up a peaceful scenario now. A residential street with houses and gardens, which were by now covered by a thin layer of snow, covering it all like with powdered sugar.

Nothing at all was indicating, that only a couple of minutes ago, there had been a fight for life or death. Human against mega hagfish.

He knew such things.

A completely innocent, common surrounding. Well run houses, well-to-do citizens, an idyll in which nobody might suggest the brutal cruelty of a murder, the less one might have expected it to happen... How often had Vicki and him be standing at such crime scenes. Murder was expected in quarters, in which teenagers and little criminals were running around and fighting each other, in which drugs were sold and whores and hustlers were searching for customers. Not in the better quarters of the city where expensive condos and villas were.

Mike took off his coat and his trousers, pushed both in a garbage bag, which he fastened with knots thoroughly, before he threw the bag in his luggage trunk and slammed the lid shut. Fortunately it was dark and nobody could see a certain detective of the Toronto Metropolitan Homicide standing in shirt, boxers, socks and shoes beside his car, before he sat down in the driver´s seat, closing the door and allowing himself to breathe deeply, seemingly for the first time since two hours...

Mike pushed the keys into the ignition lock, started the engine and maneuvered the car out of the gateway to drive home finally. The street was empty, when he reached the next crossroad and he turned to the left. It took him a while until he reached Downtown and he would need some more time to get home. His back was pressed to the backrest for the most part by the seat-belt and he could feel sticky moisture between his neck and his lower back. Any way it was still stinking penetrative. Obviously the stench had sunken its teeth so firmly into his nose, that he had to drum it into his brain, that he was breathing normal air. The garbage bag in his luggage trunk should be firmly locked. Or was that stuff such aggressive, that the stench could penetrate thru all but glass or steel?

Mike shook his head in disbelief, concentrating on the heavy traffic now. The city was never sleeping. Even at night-time there was business in Downtown, vehicles and humans were on the way, irrespective of the weather.

I don´t get it, why Vicki always gets involved with Fitzroy again...why she is always again working on such crazy cases with him? Why the heck can´t she take cases like any normal private eye? What the heck was attracting her to this world of freakiness, paranormal and crazies? None of her cases of the last time could have been called _nearly_ normal. Or was that, what she´s doing, the true reality? Had he been running around in a bubble of existence, with blinkers and a brain and eyes which were locking up from the reality?

This mind couldn´t get away from it, the hard he ever tried.

And there was, if not Vicki, only one in whole Toronto, who might give him an explanation.

And who owed him one...

Mike steered his car in the direction of Bloor West/Avenue Road...

Renaissance Plaza, Bloor West

Mike reached the entrance to the basement garage without any further problems. It was late in the night and there were no other car owners in the garage. Fortunately this garage was one of the best in the city: brightly lit, spacious and good to see and widely built. The right parking area for women. Fitzroy had his parking lot right in front of the elevator. The bastard was knowing why!

When he would be in a hurry once again...

Beside Fitzroy´s place was a reserved visitor parking, which Mike simply occupied by now. I´m Fitzroy´s guest! Otherwise officially confiscated. Eventually these are running investigations, Mike thought with a grin, that froze in his face...

...when he switched off the front lights and opened the seat belt and he was feeling this diffuse, sticky feeling on his back again. Heaven! Outside it was damn cold, but anyway he felt like being bathed in sweat and his nose mucosa seemed determined to transfer the olfactory irritation...if not to call it stench...into the olfactory center of his brain for the rest of the night.

Okay, maybe I just have to cope with that, until my brain got newly and correctly orientated again. After a long, long shower! A very long one.

With a halfway suppressed curse, Mike got out of his car, checking for the surroundings carefully and then he entered the elevator as fast as possible. He pressed the button which closed the door wings, then he pushed the button with the fourteen on it...Fitzroy´s floor, even when it wasn´t completely his. Not now, but... As far as Mike knew, Fitzroy had bought half the floor to have his privacy undisturbed. Undisturbed meals. Bastard! Mike was hoping that nobody would stop the cabin on its way upstairs to enter it too. Because a detective in shirt, socks, boxers and shoes would be somewhat...strange.

But maybe the tenants in this house were used to strange things.

After all Fitzroy wasn´t _normal_ in the common sense. But most of the tenants might credit it to the circumstance, that Fitzroy was paddling in the artists league. And these were always known as being a bit idiosyncratic.

The elevator was silently moving upwards, all seemed to run well and Mike allowed himself to relax a bit.

Then the cabin stopped with a low noised dingg.

"Oh, already there! That was..." The word _fast_ died in his mouth, when the doors opened and he looked on the floor number.

Seven!

He wasn´t already...! Cuzzo!

The man in front of him, who wanted to enter the cabin, stared at Mike. His smile froze, giving way to a rather astonished glance, when his view went down at the tall detective. Then his dark brows knitted in a disapproving glance.

"Police operation! Stay out, Mister!" Mike commanded in a reflex. That´s the last thing I´m gonna need right now! That this guy enters the cabin!

"Why so are you...?!" The man directed to Mike´s more than sparsely dressing.

Mike groaned inwardly, when he tried to push the close button, but the doors didn´t close yet, because the man was standing between the door wings, nailed to the ground by his irritation.

"I have to investigate a flooded bathtub in a flooded condo upstairs! No access!" Mike was waving his arms to ward off the guy, lifting his police badge at the same time, to put additional force to his words.

The man blinked, wrinkling his nose in slight disgust.

"Goodness, what does that stink in here...?!" the tenant groaned.

"Guess, it´s the bathtub!" Mike shot him an icy cop view and the man instinctively shrank back. Mike almost violated the close button and finally the door wings closed again and he continued to drive upstairs. Without any further interruptions.

When the cabin reached the fourteenth floor and the doors opened, Mike carefully checked the hallway before he left the cabin. Stupidly he couldn´t observe the hallway completely, because Fitzroy´s mini palazzo was lying behind a curve. So additionally, he listened carefully, before he left the safety of the elevator.

Goodness! Now I´m already acting like his Highness, vampire son of a king, Duke of and of etc. etc. on the hunt!

On the run! He corrected himself. Run!

Mike hesitated for a moment when he was standing in front of Henry´s condo. Then he knocked at the door. He waited. Nothing happened.

Wasn´t the bastard at home yet?

He knocked harder, his fist was beating against the wood.

"Open the door! Fitzroy, open the door! I know that you´re at home...!" he shouted in best police manner. Mike was about to step back, considering his chances to break the door with physical force against the option to break his shoulder instead. Fitzroy´s door was extra safe, made of wood which was inwardly fortified with double layers of steel and carbon fibers. A door at which every burglar...or enemy of Fitzroy...would break his teeth off.

"FITZROY! For the last time! Open the door!"

"I´m here, Detective!" a voice came from behind him. "If you would let me open, please..."

Mike turned around, twitching with surprise. He had been so completely fixed on it, that Fitzroy was already at home, that he had no other option taken in consideration.

"Heaven! Goodness! Fitzroy! Do you have to sneak up that way?" Mike cursed and stared at the smaller man, being visibly unnerved. His hairs were standing on ends already. What they always did since Fitzroy´s bite-and-suck-attack, when the vampire was unexpectedly showing up behind him. Vampires should be ordered by law to wear bracelets with bells around their ankles, Mike thought. Like cats, to prevent them from soundlessly stalking birds...

Henry eyes turned bled black, he shrank back, his fangs were bared and he growled under his breath. Mike referred that to his remark about Fitzroy sneaking up.

"What´s up now again, Fitzroy? I´ve only said that..." Mike growled. "And don´t stare at me in that way! Yes! I don´t have my coat and no jeans and no jacket on!" Mike was sick to death of it now. The evening had been running fucking wrong. And the one who was guilty for it, was standing directly in front of him now! Mike went on collision course now.

"Have you never seen a man in shirt and socks, Fitzroy?"

"I´ve already seen men in less than that, Detective!"

"Stop that salacious shit, damn it!" Mike bit angrily back. And made a step forward to the door.

Henry´s hands shot up parrying and he shrank back, hissing between his bared fangs, refusing Mike the access to the door.

"What shall that be? When you´re hungry, get yourself a nosh between your teeth! _I _am..._not _it!" Mike growled. In horror he thought back at the cellar of that church! That, he won´t get rid of anymore, he thought angrily. Determined not to let slip Fitzroy off his fingers, he didn´t let himself being intimidated by Fitzroy, no matter what the vampire would do. Eventually he was the cop in here!

"I want to talk with you! Now!" Mike insisted to discuss out what he had been coming for.

"But not like that!" Henry parried and he directed to Mike´s appearance.

"Shall I first dress in my uniform?" Mike snarled back. "When I´m showing up here in duty, what you can have at all, just tell me! Then we´re talking turkey!" He gasped for air. "Ya wanna it the duty way...? Prego!" Mike pulled out his police badge, holding it up in front of Henry´s nose.

Henry shrank back another step, he felt nausea rising in his throat. Mike got that completely wrong, misinterpreting Henry´s behavior as a result of his intimidating demeanor.

Henry was staring at him.

Obviously the detective still didn´t understand anything. Or didn´t he simply want to? Henry tried to cling to his good manners to not become impolite, but the detective didn´t let him any other chance now, than to talk clear words. He looked at Mike with an icy expression on his face, his hand lifted in defense, when he said:

"Detective Celluci, you´re...stinking like a thrown up cadaver!"

"I...? What? WHAT?" Mike stared at Henry, his clenched teeth were gritting and his face was getting a definitely unhealthy, dark red color. "I´m. STINKING. OF. WHAT?!"

"I´m so sorry, Detective. But that stuff...what this hagfish has pu...over you, has spit out over you, stinks beastly! Like I´ve said, I´m so sorry, but I´m afraid..." Henry noticed how angrily Mike became and he tried to sound as calm as possible, when he went on; " You should have a shower and try..."

"Showering!" Mike looked around in the hallway in helpless anger. The man on the seventh floor. The stench in his car. No illusion of his maltreated olfactory nerves. And the worst of all...

...this disgusting, sticking feeling from his neck down to...

Mike panicked at the thought of never, ever getting rid of this stench for the rest of his life.

Henry heard the heart of the detective beating faster, when he read the fear in his face. He felt pity for the man, despite all of it. Irrespective of the uncertain relation between them, the shakily trust that was hanging by a damn thin thread, since Henry had attacked him in a starved out state. Excuses might not be able to repair all of it.

Honestly Henry felt more comfortable when he was able to define frontiers clearly. Who was his opponent and whom he could trust to.

And the detective definitely was in urge of some more trust in him. Because Vicki was trusting Mike, and he, Henry, was trusting Vicki, trusting her trust in Mike.

The situation, as it was by now, was no condition in the long run.

The time had come, to teach Mike Celluci a lesson in terms of the relation Detective/vampire...

_To be continued_


	6. Chapter 6 Trust what you do not know

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 6**_

**Annotation: rated M for reason. **_Henry decides to give Mike a lesson in trust his very own way. Both are fighting their personal battles, with themselves and with each other. But when a vampire makes a decision, things can turn out completely different as Mike might have imagined. And a bathroom can become a slippery slope out of more than one reason. Some coarse language. Slash/bromance/hurt/comfort._

**Trust, what you do not know!**

Mike looked at Henry with a facial expression, that was lying between rage and honest desperation. Anyway he felt...naked. Not because he was poorly dressed, but because he had the feeling that the eyes of the vampires would be looking into the depths of his soul, into his deepest depths...

Mike blinked, when he tried to get away from these dark blue eyes. Had Fitzroy played his tricks on him again? Was he under the spell of the vampire? And what the heck...where was Vicki?

He looked down the hallway, when he heard sudden steps from behind. He felt panic risen. What if another tenant was about to come around that corner? He had to get away from here...fast! And the shortest escape way was that into Fitzroy´s rooms. Because the steps were coming from the direction of the elevator. This way of escape was blocked!

"Fitzroy!? I..." Mike sounded desperately and he made, despite Henry´s presence, a step forward in direction of the door. "I...I beg you! Let me in, before anybody will see me that way!" His words were coming fast and under pressure.

The steps were approaching...

"Indeed, Detective! That would be less good..." Henry opened the door, so fast that it was impossible to follow his movements and Mike didn´t need any request to move on. As fast as his feet obeyed, he slipped thru the door, thru the hallway inside and turned around the corner in the living-room, so he couldn´t be seen from the door. The doors to the bedroom were lying directly beside him.

There were voices in the hallway.

Vicki!

Mike was wishing that he might become invisible in front of the wall. What did Vicki want over here right now?

"You? What are ya doing here, Vicki? I thought you´d have gone home!" he went right into a confrontation to stop her from any questions, why he was in Fitzroy´s home now instead of going home himself to get a shower.

"The same I might ask _you_, Mike!" Vicki looked at him, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips.

"Ask that Fitz...Henry!" Mike sounded pissed off.

"I have a large shower and your detective might be in need of it right now, Vicki! I think, that´s out of any doubts. Before more rooms and any attendees might be..." Henry cleared his throat with his hand in front of his mouth. "...might be plagued by this...smell...by him..." With some effort Henry avoided the word stench, in an attempt not to be too offending. Not necessary, as the detective was well aware of the stench that had come in with him. Inwardly, Henry was hoping that opening the windows would be enough, to get rid of it before the turn of the next century.

"And who´s responsible for it?!" Mike bit back. He was stinking and the damn stuff was sticking to him like ultra glue and now the vampire was expatiating the theme too. The laugh is always on the loser! Mike angrily thought. He looked over to the windows. The blinds were still down, so at least nobody could see from outside, what was going on in here. When he´d be standing here any longer, he´d smudge the planks. Probably. His view went to the bedroom doors which were closed. There was a bathroom behind the bedroom, Fitzroy´s private bathroom.

Henry noticed where to Mike´s nervous look went. He smiled, opened the door wings in front of him and directed to the room, waving with his hand in direction of the door behind, that Mike could see.

"My bathroom is yours, Detective!"

Mike silently nodded, entered the bedroom, maneuvering around the carpet that was lying there, passing the broad bed, in which for sure the vampire was getting off with _meals_. He urged himself not to think about that and disappeared in the bathroom. Henry turned around to Vicki.

"Get yourself a seat, Vicki! I´ll only show Mike where he´ll find everything..." Henry disappeared in the bedroom and Vicki shortly looked after him before she went to the kitchen.

Mike threw a look on the giant shower cabin, in which he and Vicki still had showered Fitzroy, after they had him gotten out of the cellar of the church. The shower was obscenely large sized and Mike asked himself, what a single person would do with such a large shower. Or more correctly...in it. He had been showering with Vicki a couple of times in the past, at his home, but the thing in his home was way more normally sized.

If at all!

Showering with Vicki! Heaven, how often had they gone cats and dogs? Their shouting duels had been infamously. And often enough the best sex had been following up to these quarreling.

Mike shoved down his socks, feeling how warm the the floor tiles were under his bare feet. Than he noticed, that there were no heaters in the bathroom. Fitzroy´s home had an underfloor heating. At least that bastard didn´t get cold feet, Mike thought with a cynical grin, when he opened his shirt and threw it into the sink in disgust. His fingers were sticking with halfway dried slime and he searched thru the shower with his eyes. Anywhere there had to be shower gel. When his fingers were that sticky, how did his back look? Mike lifted his hand in front of his face, smelling at his finger tips.

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a disgusted grimace and he let his hand sink again.

"Cuzzo! Damn shit! Hopefully I´ll get that paste off me again...!" he cursed. Mike clawed his way out of his boxer shorts, giving it a kick with his foot, that let the boxers sail thru half the bathroom.

"Eh! What...!?" Mike grumbled. What the dumpling did the vampire want?

"I´m seeing that you´ve still found everything..." Henry directed to the pile of towels which were lying on a small shelf beside the shower cabin.

"Looks like that, Fitzroy! And now...!" Mike began.

Henry nodded. His view went over the shower, stopping dead on Mike´s muscular back, that was stained by a glassy, sticky mass at certain areas. Broad shoulders were ending in a straight, broad back, muscle strands were reaching down to the hips, ending in a tight butt. Mike had slim, well formed thighs and the length of his legs was fitting to his tall size. And when Mike was moving his hand now to close the shower door behind him, Henry felt the urge to let his hand glide down his back...feeling for the warm flesh and for the streaming of the blood under the skin.

Mike closed the shower door.

For a moment Henry was standing in front of the door, which Mike practically had slammed shut in front of his nose. A smirk glided over his face and he shook his head. Undecided he looked at the shadow, that was moving behind the striated opal glass pane.

Mike turned on the water, feeling for the taps with closed lids, regulating the temperature, until the water was so warm he could even stand it. He sighed, when the hot water was running down his back. Hopefully he would be able to wash off that sticky stuff! He neither was in the mood to have this paste on his skin any longer...who knows, what that stuff was able to...nor to run around with this stench for days. What shall Dave or Kate think of me, when I stink like a bucket full of vomit. For a moment, the thought at it let fear boil up within him.

Gastric juices. Stomach contents. Rajani had said anything like that. Fermented tissue on the corpse.

Crap!

What if...?

He didn´t feel like slowly dissolving into his parts. And this stench was adhering to him way too long!

"Crap! Where´s the friggin shower gel?"Mike cursed, when he felt over the wall with his eyes closed until his searching fingers finally found a small basket in one corner. Mike opened his eyes to a narrow slit, while the water from his hairs was running over his forehead and over his face. The water was streaming down and so Mike wasn´t able to hear what was going on outside the shower cabin. He opened the bottle, took a large amount of the shower gel and reached out to soap his neck and back. That was painful and Mike was afraid of not getting soaped down his whole back. He had to twist his wrists to reach almost all areas. He groaned angrily. His neck and his back were hurting, when he almost contorted his head. Heaven, he was totally tensed. First of all the day in the office and then this monster in the damn sewer! He had almost contorted his arm, when he had clung to the net with only one hand with all strength, in an attempt to press his handgun to that slimy skull of this slimebag. Now he felt his shoulder hurting when he started to swab his back.

Henry heard Celluci groan, a sound of discomfort.

The cabin door was opened.

Mike felt cool air on his back. What the heck...? Anybody was behind him.

Behind? Why behind?

The door of the cabin was behind him...which was closed now again. The stream of cold air subsided. Was Vicki...?

"Vicki?! Is that you? You can scrub my back...my shoulder is damn hurting, since I hung myself from that slime clot..." Mike complained without looking around, for what he had to tilt his head in an attempt to get his face out of the water stream. A new groan slipped from his lips when he moved his head. "Crap! I´m so tensed...!"

Henry silently smiled. The warm water was streaming around his feet when he now stepped in behind Mike. His groaning sounded of pain and when it turned into a sigh, the sound was awakening a completely different desire in Henry, than to get a nosh between his teeth. For a couple of seconds,. his eyes were following the water that was running down Mike´s back. Down from the neck over the muscles down to the slim, tight buttocks, which were ending in well formed legs.

"Vicki...?" Mike mumbled. "Get started, I have..."

"Not Vicki." Henry truthfully answered. Would the detective have his sense of smell and his hearing, then he already would have known, who was standing with him in the shower cabin.

"WHAT?" Mike twitched, turning halfway around, what wasn´t that easy on the floor tiles of the shower, that were dripping with water. His right leg slipped and he reached out with his arm to stabilize himself. A strong hand grabbed for him, giving him firm support.

"Oops! Carefully, Mike!"

Mike stared into the vampire´s face.

"What the heck? Why are you...?" Eyes, so blue like the Lake Ontario on a warm summer day, were boring into the cerulean of the vampire.

"I´m dirty too and when I´ll soap and scrub your back, Michael Celluci, then it´ll be easier..." Henry made his voice sound especially soft, when he sensed a mix of adrenaline and fear in the detective. His eyes stayed blue when he noticed the suppressed fear in Mike. No sense to go vamped-out now to influence Mike. All to vividly Henry reminded the moment in the church, when in the cellar of the church he had attacked Mike without any restrain, who had thrown himself between him and Vicki. In his frantic hunger he had almost been intoxicated by the taste of his blood, which was heavy with adrenaline and tasting of fear... Wouldn´t have Vicki intervened, he´d have taken way too much. What he already had...

Henry had full understanding for Mike´s fear and he didn´t want, that the detective would be afraid of him again.

"Fitzroy!" Mike growled when he looked at him, blinking from under his wet, blonde hair. With one hand he wanted to wipe the strands out of his face, but he found out that his hand was full of soap. Angrily he shook his head to whirl the tendrils out of his face.

This gesture looked so defiant, so boyish, so...young.

Goodness, in relation to him probably everybody was young...Henry thought.

"Henry!" Henry answered in a low voice.

Mike stared at him, his mouth opened when Henry´s left hand moved upward and were softly stroking the hair out of Mike´s forehead. At the same time his thumb was gliding over Mike´s temple and he gave the detective a soft glance.

Mike was about to protest, his lower jaw hinged down, but he didn´t brought out a word when Henry simply said: "Turn around, then I can wash your back..." That wasn´t a command and Henry´s voice was soft and Mike dared to look consciously into Henry´s eyes. These black eyes were Mike´s very personal nightmare since the night in that church. These bled black eyes and the pin pointed fangs which had been digging into his shoulder neck curve with brutal force. But now Henry´s eyes were bright and also his fangs stayed retracted. Obviously in an attempt not to scare the shit outta him...

Mike didn´t even know it yet, why he was now moving around, turning his back to Fitzroy instead of pushing the door open and to throw the vampire out of the shower. Possibly he was simply too tired for a dispute and when someone would wash his back, he wouldn´t need to strain his hurting muscles again. He was hurting all over and now he felt the results of the fight more intense than before, on his trip home. Then he had been turned on too much: The fight and his fear and concerns for Vicki and her companion, this young goth, who was coping with all this absurd stuff of occultism, creatures from hell and ghosts, vampires and demons, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. But without her assistant, Vicki often would be in a fix. This young woman had a knowledge, that he and others were lacking of completely...

Henry stepped nearer behind him and his hands moved over Mike´s back, spreading the soap over his shoulders, neck and back down to the hips. His left hand was gliding deeper over Mike´s left hip and he could feel, when the detective shrunk back.

Okay, he thought. Slowly, don´t scare him off, he ordered himself. He pulled his left hand back, letting it circle over Mike´s back, while his right hand was working its way up to Mike´s neck. Slowly the sticky slime dissolved from his skin, flowing down into the sink with the soap and the water. Mike unconsciously groaned when the fingers of the vampire touched a point on his neck, that was especially hurting, unintentionally putting some pressure to the point. He twitched, flinching a bit.

"Any pain, Mike...?" Henry softly asked when he carefully felt over the muscle. His fingers laid on the muscle strand, his thumb tentatively put some pressure on it, slightly intensifying it. Mike groaned again.

"Uuh...that hurts...I´m...damned tensed..." Mike took his head back forwardly, to escape the pressure that was built up by Henry´s thumb.

"You´re totally tensed. I can feel it. Let me help you..." Henry´s voice was calm, not salacious even to the slightest, when he now felt over Mike´s back and neck with great care. His hands were gliding over the skin, the muscles, feeling, stroking, kneading and putting some soft pressure into it, how and when it was necessary.

Mike sighed, laying his head in his neck and Henry felt, how the detective was leaning into the movement and the muscles were relaxing, when Mike´s physical tension subsided.

"That´s good! Relax, Detective...that´s all completely tensed..." Henry was leaning nearer to him, whispering into his ear: "You should start to let go more..." His hand was gliding deeper to Mike´s lower back, circling around there, then moving to the side over the hip, somewhat forwardly... Then he stroked down to Mike´s right upper thigh, while his left hand was lying on his lower back.

Mike groaned. A sound between groaning and a comfortable feeling, when he felt his muscles relaxing under these cool, strong hands and the tension was subsiding.

Crap! The vampire was damn talented, at least when it came to relax tensed muscles. He didn´t want to think of...other things now.

He was so tired, so damn tired and he wasn´t up to think about how to get that finished here most elegantly. To get out of the situation without losing his poise and his self-respect. His mind tried to remind him, that what he was doing here, was violating his fixed rules. He would only shower alone, since he didn´t do that together with Vicki anymore. And now he was standing in a shower... together with a vampire.

With a man.

A man/being who had attacked him recently and had almost killed him. More correctly said;...had drained him! What in heaven was going on with him? Had Fitzroy/Henry him under his control so far, that he didn´t know anymore, what he was doing...or wanted to do? Mike believed to have the feeling, that black eyes were piercing into the back of his head. With some effort he turned his head so far, that he was able to look at Henry. To his surprise, he found the face of the vampire being much nearer to his shoulder than he had expected, while Henry´s hand was still lying on his right hip and his thumb was softly circling over his kidney area.

Henry´s eyes were bright and he smiled slightly, when Mike groaned, when his thumb hit a sensitive point of a nerve. Mike twitched slightly and sighed, when a hot shudder was running down his back.

"Relax...relax Mike, I won´t hurt you..." Henry was whispering with such a soft voice directly into Mike´s ear, that it drove another shudder down his spine. Henry´s left hand shoved forward over Mike´s hip, stopping on his belly right below his belly button, what was acknowledged by the detective with a surprised, new groaning. His right hand moved downward from his hip, back to his buttock, working his way down over his tailbone. Was stroking over nerve points of which Mike didn´t know, that those were even existing.

"What...what are you doing? What shall...?" Mike gasped in some confusion.

"Sssshhh...relax! I won´t do anything that you don´t want, Mike. Don´t be afraid..."

Mike groaned when Fitzroy´s hands were massaging an especially hurting area of his lower spine. He felt those cool hands moving in circles over his buttocks. Henry leaned against him and Mike felt his breath in his neck...

_For seconds Fitzroy´s breath was snarling in his ears, hot and hectically. Mike shuddered, when fingers were clinging to his head and his arm like bench vises. He felt when his head was merciless tilt to the side, the muscles in his neck side got brutally stretched, when his head tilted over. His pulse was hammering like a steam beetle thru his jugular vein, made his heart racing, when he unsuccessfully tried to free himself from the iron grip._

_Senseless._

_Breath at his throat, so fierce and fast, like he had never expected it from Fitzroy. Hectically like in a fever. Fitzroy...he smelled of hunger, salt, burning thirst, sweat and...blood. Groans. Mike didn´t know, if it was him, who was groaning or this...that...man-thing, that was hanging on him. Hanging on him like a heavy burden. Heaven! Fitzroy had to be almost mad from pain. Oh my God! Then it was him, definitely him, Mike, who was groaning, when fangs were digging deep into his throat with rural force and then glowing hot lips pressed to his throat. An animalistic growl, that was finally tilted when Fitzroy started to suck, to gulp down like a drowning man..._

_His blood..._

_God, Vicki! Help me! He would..._

_Fitzroy was hanging on him like an armor, his arms wrapped around him, his hand pulling his head to the side, while his fangs were ravaging the right side of his neck, sucking...sucking, gulping down. Fitzroy´s weight almost pulled him to the ground. Mike screamed and then he could barely keep himself on his legs, when the weight on him seemed to double. Vicki´s voice was hammering in his ears..._

"_Henry! Stop! Henry, stop it, you´re killing him! Henry...!"_

_Mike felt how his strength left him, blackness was creeping into his focus from beside, hot and cold. Coldness. Cold blackness was digging into his brain...he heard himself groan. His throat was on blaze. Teeth like daggers..._

Mike twitched, pressing out a startled groan and Henry suddenly smelt...fear on Mike. Oh my God, my goodness! He hadn´t want this! The less intended it! What had he done to Mike? Mike was so full of fear, this he could smell. And he could hear it when Mike´s heart-rate was speeding up.

"Mike...God, Mike...I´m so very sorry..." Henry´s voice was full of regret and guilt, when he laid a hand on Mike´s shoulder.

Mike turned his head, he stared in Henry´s eyes, in which he could see an expression of grief. Mike was in a turmoil, so...Heaven, he didn´t know it, what he should feel. Desperately he tried to swallow down the knot in his throat. His eyes started to burn.

"What...what do you want?" he snarled in a raspy voice. He didn´t know to help himself other than to go on confrontation. Angrily he felt, that tears started to burn in his eyes. Mike blinked, blinked again, but he couldn´t prevent it that tears were running down his cheeks

"Mike. Please don´t, Mike! I..." Henry whispered with a weak voice. He left his hand where it was. "I didn´t want that, Mike. I was..."

"You´ve been totally freaked out! I...I almost ended up getting killed!" Mike growled with such bitterness, that it drove a dagger thru Henry´s heart.

"I...I hadn´t been freaked-out. Only starved out. And such hunger...You don´t have any imagination of it, when..."

"My imagination of it, is quite clear, Henry...when my life is on disposition! It had never been clearer to me, as in the moment when you almost drained me...!"

Mike tried to sound hard, but his voice broke under a salty wave of tears, which he tried to swallow down. Without success.

Crap! He was standing here, in the shower and he was crying like a baby. Damn! He hated it to be so weak. And that in front of the bastard. And then he became aware, that he was calling Fitzroy by his first name all the time. What was going on with him? Angrily he wanted to get away from Henry, to shake his hand off, but the expression in the vampire´s eyes was so full of pain. His view seemed literally to ask for forgiveness. To beg for it.

Mike swallowed hard and Henry felt under his hands, how much he was trembling. His hand were gliding over Mike´s shoulders and down his back and he relocated his weight, leaning himself carefully against Mike. When he felt no defense, he softly and slowly moved in closer to him. The skin was warm and soft from the streaming, warm water and Mike sighed in a low voice, when Henry´s body was shoving against his back,

Henry breathed deeply with closed eyes, when he heard Mike´s heartbeat, the streaming of his blood under his skin when his veins were widened by the warmth. Mike´s smell, his scent, now freed from the stench of that sticky slime, let Henry´s immortal heart beat faster and he felt when he grew hard. When Mike didn´t ward him off, he leaned in closer, until his belly was lying at Mike´s lower back.

"Don´t be afraid, Mike! I won´t do anything you don´t want. Promised! Let me show you...prove, that you won´t have any need to be afraid of me...Please, Mike...!" Henry whispered in his ear.

"What...what do you...want...?" Mike uncertainly mumbled.

"Possibly...possibly I want to make good for something..." Henry whispered with a velvety voice. Mike was moving against him, supporting himself with his fingers pressed against the wet tiles, when he felt fingers moving along his lower spine. Down and up again.

Mike groaned. "Go on, Fitzroy..." he extruded a gasp. And without thinking about it further on, he spread his legs.

This invitation was enough of a request for Henry.

Mike closed his eyes.

Henry´s hand moved deeper, his finger were gliding between Mike´s legs. He drove his tongue over Mike´s shoulder blades, up to his neck and his left hand clasped around the detective´s hip. With his right hand he felt his way forward from his tail bone to the front, stopping dead there. Mike didn´t struggle and encouraged by it, his fingers moved on and Mike groaned. Henry felt when Mike grew hard too, when his fingers were softly gliding over his balls and dick. Henry bent nearer, lying his mouth on Mike´s neck, kissing him gently. He pressed himself tighter to Mike, his lips were slightly opening and then he drove his...still blunt...teeth over his shoulder blades.

He could literally smell Mike´s blood under his skin. Mike, whose heartbeat was speeding up yet, when he felt where to his blood was flowing. Downwards, not upwards like in that moment, when Henry was ravaging his throat like an animal. Mike groaned when Henry closed his left hand around his hard erection and his fingers were playfully moving over the overly sensitive tip. Teeth were tenderly gnawing at his right shoulder and Mike felt the tips come out, scratching over his moist skin without breaking it. The touch let him shudder.

Henry pressed tighter to Mike´s butt, started move at him, rubbing himself at him and Mike felt his hard erection at his tail bone.

Oh goodness!

In a mixture of suppressed fear and expectation, Mike felt...arousal growing in him. Heaven, he could not...He could not do anything like that yet...

Henry behind him sighed so deeply and extended, that Mike´s reasonable mind switched off and he tensed his back when a hot shudder was running upward from his tail bone. Henry kissed him, was gasping, when he wriggled at Mike´s back. He heard Mike´s heart hammering, heard the blood streaming faster thru his veins. Mike tensed under him, leaning against the tiles with a deep moaning, when he felt his own desire growing. That was mad what he was...

Henry was leaning at his shoulder, his voice singing in Mike´s ear, velvety, gently. "...I don´t harm you, Mike..." he whispered and Mike trembled when lips were moving at his ear, when Henry´s tongue licked playfully over his neck and shoulder, down and up again.

When Mike shuddered under his hand and his tongue, Henry knew that he could have him. His own arousal was inevitably rising and Mike was gasping, leaning himself against Henry´s erection with his butt.

Also a creature of the night has his limits. And his own had been reached just now...

Mike threw his head in his neck, giving off inarticulate noises, when Henry´s left hand was stroking his abdominal wall, drawing circles, moving up and down between his belly button and his dick. When the detective was leaning into his hand, Henry knew that he wouldn´t get away with it so easily.

Not here and not yet.

Mike sighed deeply when the cool and firm fingers moved over his lower belly, cool and warm at the same time. He closed his eyes, didn´t want to see this yet. When he closed his eyes, he would be able to disconnect from it. To disconnect from what his body was doing. His body shouted YES, while his reasonable mind was hammering NO into him. There were seconds of doubts, then his body won over his mind. He tilted his head back, turning his head around so far, that he could look into Fitzroy´s face. Catching a glimpse of...

bled black eyes...

Oh my goodness. Mike groaned. Black...black like...Depth. Abyss. Black. Bottomless soft depth. So deep. He has had fear then and now...

Now he felt turned on by it, like he hadn´t felt like since a long time...

Getting lost. Unintentionally he shoved himself backwards, against Henry...He wanted to feel the body that was rubbing at him. Henry slightly sighed, separating a bit from Mike´s butt and he heard the detective moan in disappointment. Was he indeed afraid of missing out in here?

Henry felt with his right hand for the small basket at the wall, of which he knew, without even looking at it, where it was. His fingers found what he was searching for. With his thumb and forefinger the opened the tube, spreading a generous amount of the gel on himself and on his hand. Not so easy when Mike was moving, ramming into Henry´s left hand at the same time, as if he was afraid to miss out when he didn´t help himself.

"Easy...easy, Mike..." Henry whispered, when he covered his own erection with a glistening film. Mike shoved himself backwards, feeling Henry´s hard tip at his tail bone. Without even looking at, Mike started to move, his back opening was searching for the feeling, that would tell him, that the vampire was at the place, where his body wanted him to be.

His mind...uh, don´t give a fuck on my mind! He just wanted to finish now, what the damn bastard had begun!

Mike´s butt was so close on him, that Henry had to bring some inches between them, lowering the pressure, so he could get his hand to the place he wanted it to be; between Mike´s butt and his own belly.

The detective gave off a moan of surprise, when a single finger was carefully pressing against the sphincter of his anus, massaging the area with drawing circles, until Henry could feel, that Mike relaxed a bit, so he could carefully push his finger forward, into Mike... Henry kissed his way down Mike´s spine, who twitched under his finger and gave way a bit in a reflex.

He hadn´t done that for a long time, a very long time and he sighed.

Henry knew that it came all surprisingly for him, when he entered him with one finger, than a second and a third one. For sure, that wasn´t what Mike had expected, what he had anticipated. He, Henry had tapped a key in Mike, waiting. From a...showering with Mike, over giving him a massage, up to this now. Waiting, step to step forwarding, always being aware, that Mike could be blocking at any moment out of a sudden. Or that his fear would win, so that Mike would back off, warding him off.

Henry had come to the conclusion on his way back to home.

Mike had been making such a terrifying experience with him, that he couldn´t let that last any longer between them. If he won´t take action on it now, then the tension between them would become worse, the more time Mike´s brain would get to cope with the trauma of this attack by a completely starved out and almost being bled out vampire. Henry knew by long experience, that time was the factor to worsen everything, the more time he´d give Mike to think of what had happened. Mike would start to imagine, how near to death he had been and his mortal brain would be more and more picturing, what might have happened, making his fear growing...

The only therapy that looked useful to Henry, was to show Mike in plain language, that there was another side of the coin too. That drinking blood under full control had nothing to do with the destructive violence, which Mike´s brain was hammering in as the typical image of a vampire.

"Relax, Detective...relax! I don´t hurt you, Mike...!" Henry whispered in a low voice behind him and Mike sagged against him with a soft moan, not fending him off. Mike´s sounds became very inarticulate, when Henry´s hand closed around his hard erection, moving up and down at it, while his thumb played with the tip.

"How...oh my dear!" Mike´s groan was raspy. "...my Goodness...Fitz...fuck...what are you doin´?"

"As you wish, Mike! I´m gonna fuck you, Detective..." Henry´s voice was playfully teasing him and Mike felt, when his fingers were working their way deeper into him, dilating him, at...oh gosh...!...were stroking along his prostate. A hot wave was spreading from it thru his loins, creeping up his back and causing a comfortable feeling of weakness, that threatened to pull his legs from under him... He groaned deeply. Could he grow any harder? His blood was hammering in his dick and Mike felt hard enough to break rocks.

He had to confess to himself, that he had never regretted a perfect boner... God, Fitzroy...! When the damn bastard would go on with teasing him, he´d burst right into that vampire´s hand. Bastard! That bastard was damn slick... Crap! He was right about to get off with that vampire bastard in his damn shower. That hadn´t happened to him at last with...Vicki. She could make him...oh my!

Please...oh please...go on, Fitz...! he inwardly gasped.

Henry knew what he was doing. He won´t end it that fast. The detective deserved a special treatment. Henry silently smirked behind Mike´s back when he heard the desperate grunts from his lips. Felt himself hardening, ready to go.

Gently Henry pulled his fingers out of Mike´s opening. Mike shuddered, his overly turned on loins pushed backwards, against Henry, when the pressure inside suddenly subsided.

Gosh! He was so shortly before it! So short...

Please! Oh my God, please! Go on! Mike beseechingly thought.

Henry´s left hand became faster and the detective started to breathe heavier and faster and was pressing himself backwards against him.

"Easy...easy...slowly, Mickey...not that fast..." Henry whispered in his ear, nibbling at his earlobe. "...we both wanna make it you enjoying it and I wanna enjoy you too..." Playfully he bit into Mike´s earlobe with blunt teeth, fixing it between his upper and lower jaw. He could feel Mike´s pulse pounding against the tip of his tongue, hot and fast. Henry gave off a deep, low growl between clenched teeth and his own pulse was speeding up in expectation of the passionate, heated blood in Mike. Tasting a partner´s blood in the heat of passion was even better, than to taste the fear in an evildoer, who had become aware that he was about to die now...

Henry felt his fangs itching to fall and he let go.

Mike twitched and gave a high pitched groan, when Henry´s fangs pierced the sensitive skin of Mike´s ear. That couldn´t have hurt really, as his fangs had barely scratched, the less broken the skin. He tasted a drop of sweet blood that was heavy with the pheromones of passion, heavy like the scent that came from Mike´s moist skin. And Henry was aware that he would have Mike yet, right here and right now!

He maneuvered his pounding cock...goodness, he was so hard that it was already hurting...at Mike´s backwardly opening, carefully intensifying the pressure. He didn´t want to cause him any pain and Henry didn´t know, if the good detective had any experience with this kind of enjoyment, if he was used to a male partner entering him from behind...

Carefully he pushed forward until the tip of his cock entered Mike´s anus for just half an inch. Henry hesitated carefully, waiting for Mike´s reaction. Would Mike ward him off?

Mike´s heartbeat was speeding up and the blood was pounding in his dick and he felt a hot wave exploding inside him, hot with expectation and desire. For a moment he gasped, when a thought shot thru the last remains of what one might call a reasonable mind.

That guy was sucking blood! Human blood and he was about to fuck with him, without anything between. There were...

"Is...is it? Safe...?" Mike brought out with a trembling voice. Heat crept up around his heart, but his blood had gone anywhere else. There was hot dizziness in his upper body and in his head, but his cock was pounding like hell and the touch of Henry´s tip in his anus made him almost burst with lust. He could barely wait for the answer, the releasing answer from Henry´s lips.

"It´s utterly safe, Mike...my blood is clean...it can´t transmit any disease...you won´t have to worry, Mike! Trust me..." Henry answered. Mike nodded with a grunt.

Seconds before...

...Mike groaned deeply, shoving backwards.

Henry took this as an affirmation, that the detective was willing to go. His next words washed off any slightest doubts, when Mike shuddered and growled;

"...go on, Henry!...heaven...I can´t...what do you wait, _bastard_?!" Mike´s voice was raspy with need and desperate desire. Henry smiled about the _bastard_. He was a bastard, a royal bastard and he would make him get off like the son of a king would make him.

Mike´s fingernails made a scratching noise on the cabin´t tiles, when he clung to them for support, his hands pressing against the walls on both sides of him. He couldn´t wait any longer... And Henry knew it, when he felt the first wave of pre-cum dripping from Mike´s cock at his fingertips.

Only his centuries long experience was giving him advantage in preventing Mike from prematurely exploding in his hand, when Henry now throw his head back, holding his breath without conscious will, when he slowly started to enter Mike. He carefully pushed forward, giving Mike the time he would need to adapt to his size. Mike should feel comfortable with him, no fear, no pain...

This wasn´t rape, this was mutual agreement...

Mike groaned deeply and guttural.

And Henry knew, that they both had taken the path of no return now...

"God...can, wha...what?...oh gosh!" Mike moaned. That wasn´t what he had expected. Henry felt him tense. He stopped.

"Relax, Mike...relax..." Henry bent over, gently kissing Mike´s shoulder, his left hand was playing with Mike´s dick. "Relax...Mike...don´t tense...you wanna it too, ain´t you?" His voice was low and velvety. When Mike groaned, Henry pulled back a bit. Heaven, he was so hard that it was hurting. His body and the animal within commanded him to take Mike and to ram into him without giving any thought to it...to take, what was his and to claim Mike his property.

But he fought the uncontrollable desire down, demanding the animal in him back behind the bars of the cage, which he had built up a long time ago.

Control.

It was all about control. He wanted Mike and he wanted it to make as comfortable as possible for Mike. This wasn´t the time to give in to the hunger. Mike had been awakening a hunger of a completely different kind in him. Blood was only playing a minor role this time. Mike had way too much experience with a Henry, who was out of control then and yet, in this night, it was about to make something good on him.

He would take his time with Mike, because he wanted, that the detective would keep this night in a good memory. Henry´s right hand moved upward on Mike´s belly, stroking over his chest, his fingers were playing with Mike´s nipples. "Enjoy it!" Henry whispered in his ear, licking with his tongue over the side of Mike´s throat. Scenting, tasting Mike and feeling him shudder, when he nibbled at his earlobe again, twitching under the touch.

Mike had the feeling, that his earlobe was on fire, the edge, where Henry had rather scratched him than bitten, was pounding and he wasn´t sure if the bastard had really drawn blood. But to feel for his ear, would mean that his hand had to let go of the wall...at least one hand. And he needed both hands for support on the wet and slippery tile walls.

When Henry felt, that Mike was leaning more against him, to meet him half way and his heartbeat was speeding up, Henry softly intensified the pressure, pushing deeper into Mike´s opening. Mike hold his breath, pressing his hands against the tiles. His whole body tensed and he breathed in gasps, feeling when Henry entered him painfully slowly. The damn bastard knew exactly, what he was doing! And..._how_..to do it. Gosh, he was so tensed! And the pressure inside him was increasing. Heaven, Fitzroy had to have the size of... Crap! It must be an eternity, since he had done that the last time. With a man...

In his teenage orientation period...

Mike tensed hard.

Henry´s hand moved up to his neck, caressing his throat.

Oh God, when he would bite him yet..., it shot thru Mike´s mind. That feeling of cool fingers at his throat, seconds, before his head had been brutally pressed to the left side...

But the fingers were gentle this time. Tenderly caressing him, not brutally powerful. And Mike realized, that the touch was strangely arousing him, arousing and...relaxing. A warm wave was running down his back and Mike moaned in a low voice.

Henry felt the body relaxing under him, the resistance was subsiding where he was working his way into Mike. Carefully he pushed deeper, embracing Mike´s chest with his right arm, pulling him in tighter, in an attempt to guide Mike´s body. And to prevent Mike from abruptly moving in a direction Henry would hurt him, or Mike would hurt him... He kissed his way along Mike´s throat and neck, then he licked with his tongue over the detective´s neck.

Mike gave up any resistance.

"You´re enjoying it though, Mike..." Henry whispered into his ear with a voice like velvet, when he pulled back a bit. He tenderly gnawed at Mike´s ear. Already his voice alone was driving a shudder thru the body of the detective.

Out. And in again.

What Mike answered with a row of deep groans and moans. Out, In. Every time a bit deeper.

Henry intensified his ministrations on Mike´s hardened dick The detective gasped , his heart was racing and he was about to explode. His back was on blaze and he felt with his eyes closed, the heat in his lower half of the body. A feeling as if at any moment, it would pull his legs from under him, when Henry was groaning, rapidly ramming into him. Mike couldn´t hold back any longer now.

He groaned, almost growling. And when he finally came, it was like an explosion. So intense and hard like never before. He screamed inarticulate.

"Hen...ry! God! HENRY!" Glowing and hot he released himself into Henry´s hand, his dick twitched when he emptied his seed in a gush of white, milky liquid.

In that very moment it absolutely didn´t matter anymore, with whom he was doing that here. Or more exactly...who was doing that _with him_. He, Mike, simply needed it yet! He was so bushed. That whole day in the office, this crap all over these weeks before, not to mention the fact, that he couldn´t get rid of the memory, that he had almost send Henry to his doom.

"God, Fitzroy...hold me tight! Don´t...don´t let go. Of me. Now!" he gasped when he let himself fall backwards...against Henry. Henry´s back hit the wall and that was the last kick he needed to come. Mike´s weight that was falling against him, onto him, meeting his momentum, that made Mike impaling himself on Henry, who now let completely go himself with an inarticulate scream.

Henry exploded into him only seconds later. A noise like from a predator, a mix of groans and growls which came from his half opened mouth, his eyes turned bled black and he felt his fangs extending completely. Henry bent his head, driving his fangs into Mike´s shoulder curve. The tips of his fangs, sharp as the point of a needle, broke thru Mike´s skin. Exactly in the moment when he was exploding into Mike. Henry groaned deeply, when the first drops of blood touched his gums and the roof of his mouth and he felt the overwhelming urge to drink, to feed and to give in to his hunger and his lust.

Mike screamed when his dick jerked and twitched and a glowing wave was rolling over him, when the vampire bit down.

No pain, but desire...

Henry kept himself under control, only pressing the tips of his fangs into the vein, holding back with long trained practice in an attempt not to give in to the animal within...with driving the fangs in deeply, as far as they will go...and causing Mike pain, as he had already done it.

The taste of his blood was intoxicating, threatened to overwhelm him...a hot, red cloud, sweet with the fire of passion. Mike was delicious...more than he ever had dared to expect from this stubborn man. Mike´s surrender to him was a gift for Henry, his passion, his willingness...

He was holding Mike tightly, his hands lying, clinging to the amazingly strong and warm body of the detective. He felt Mike´s muscles moving under his hands, under his body. He felt the body trembling with arousal under his hands. And Mike had the feeling that he had completely lost any contact to the ground. The walls of the shower around him became strangely blurred, melting, dissolving when he closed his eyes under a row of groans.

Crap! That bastard was...huge...

Henry was determined to continue the game, he was moving in and out, heard Mike groaning, when he increased his speed again and Mike seemed to meet him in it.

"Henry...oh God, Henry! Please!...Oh Henry, please! I...I..." he was gasping. "I...beg you, Henry!" Mike pressed out. He only felt the in and out and in again. The cock of the vampire seemed to be so thick and so large, when he pulled back from him. Mike meant to feel every millimeter of Henry and paradoxically he was only afraid, that Henry would pull back from him completely. He tensed the muscles in his buttocks, to get hold of Henry, fixing him, so that...

...and he almost let out a scream, when in the same moment the vampire drove in deeper, against the resistance, dilating him and Mike was feeling that a second wave was rolling over him, when Henry was moving in and out with increasing speed. The breath of the vampire was stroking warm and in short gasps over the skin of his neck, making his hair standing on ends. Mike believed to hoover, when he felt his blood being sucked upwards, in between the velvety hot lips which were caressing his throat. Full of tenderness and passion, not raw. Mike was sure, that Henry also could act completely different. He might not have thought it to be possible, that the vampire had such stamina.

Henry was ramming into Mike, guiding the detective´s body with his own and then he moaned loudly, when a second, unstoppable wave swept over him. He threw his head back, his teeth pulling out of Mike´s shoulder curve so abruptly, that he almost screamed from it. Henry groaned so deep and guttural, that it sounded like a growl, when he immersed in Mike finally.

In a wave of glowing heat the milky white liquid shot from his cock. He had become so hard now, that it was a release from pain, when he emptied himself into Mike for the second time in this night. And adding another chaos to the still existing one in Mike´s back opening.

Gosh! Mike felt like he was almost bursting, when he was flowing over and the semen was running down at the backside of his thighs, mixing with his own between his legs. Hot liquid, that was running over his skin. Astonishingly hot...

Crap! It was still night-time, not day. The sun would be rising hours later and Fitzroy couldn´t be ablaze, that the bastard came in heat when he...Jeez, Mike thought, groaning. There was only incoherent nonsense coming from Mike´s lips, when he had the strong feeling to fall, wouldn´t there have been strong arms, who kept him upright.

Henry gently pulled him to his chest, his breath was coming in hard, gasping intakes, when for a moment he rested his head on Mikes shoulder in exhaustion. His tongue was softly moving the bite marks, gently licking over the wound, until the bleeding subsided when the coagulant in his saliva started to work.

"That...that was...in...cre...dible! Mike brought out in hawed gasps, interrupted by hard intakes of breath. His heard was pounding in his chest and Henry could hear it like a bell in a large hall. The loud beat of a man´s heart, strong and steady and yet so fast. He felt Mike trembling and quiver and his fingers slipped over the moist tiles, when he gently pulled Mike to him and caressed his shoulder with his lips.

"You don´t even have an imagination, Mickey...!" he whispered with his velvety voice and licked over his lips, lingering on the aftertaste of Mike´s blood, enjoying it.

Mike fought for breath, his muscles were slightly trembling and he still felt Henry deep inside him.

"My gosh!" he gasped, feeling exhausted, his heart was pounding in his ears. "...ain´t...ain´t you...got enough now...?"

Henry kissed his neck, licking the skin, that was wet with sweat. The bleeding had stopped and the bite marks had already started to heal. They would have disappeared within two days, Henry thought, when he gave Mike´s throat a warily look. Tonight he had kept control and normally vampire bites were rather discrete. He had only tasted Mike without really drinking from him. He had already taken way too much from Mike not all too long ago and Henry knew, that the interval after such a blood loss was too short, to take more than only a couple of small sips. He had Mike only bitten yet, to demonstrate him, how less fearful it could be and free from pain, when it happened in mutual agreement, in the moment of high passion...

Mike felt completely exhausted. He took a deep breath, feeling his muscles slightly trembling, rather by weakness than by the aftermath of passion. He turned his face to Henry and tried to keep his voice under control when he pretended to sound casually, in an attempt to hide his condition from the vampire. But with only poor success.

"God...I can´t...an...more...! Fitz...roy..." he groaned, unable to hide his exhaustion. A vampire had a preternatural stamina and endurance, by nature. When Fitzroy would be pulling back from him now too fast, he would helplessly drop to the ground, Mike thought. His hands were clinging to the wet tiles of the shower cabin, slipping on the moist surface, not even the best support...

Henry lifted his left arm, embracing Mike´s chest, staining his skin in the process with what Mike´s body had spilled. He could feel the detective´s heart beating wildly under his fingers and his breath came in fast, hard intakes. Henry leaned his head on Mike´s shoulder, kissing him gently on the place where he had driven in his teeth. He laid his right hand around Mike´s hip, on his abdominal wall.

"Relax, Mike..." he softly hawed.

Gasping.

"Sssscch...relax. Easy...easy..." When he had the feeling, that he was holding the detective in a safe grip, he pulled out of Mike a bit.

Mike twitched. Ain´t that bastard had enough yet...? What the fuck...friggin vampire stamina! His back opening was already worn out enough. Crap! It was friggin long ago, since he he had sex with someone that way. And this someone had been a human, not a...vampire.

"God, screw you, Fitzroy!" Mike groaned. _Once again I won´t make it thru this_. He was completely done, too... On the one hand, he hadn´t want it, on the other hand... Crap! Fitzroy had tricked him into it. But to be honest to himself, he had to confess, that he simply hadn´t done anything to keep Fitzroy at bay. And he was done and bushed and...satisfied and sated at the same time. Angrily he let his look move around, turning his head only to look into Henry´s gently smiling face.

"No worries, Mike..." Henry whispered.

"Please...not. Again." Mike found his own voice to sound ridiculously weak and helpless in his own ears, but he simply won´t be able...he felt how much his knees were shaking and against his willing, he sagged against Henry´s chest. He could feel the soft skin and strong muscles at his back. Then strong arms were embracing him and Henry was pulling out of him in a gentle, slow move.

This damn bastard seemed to enjoy it though! Every friggin millimeter of his size. That guy was already hard again and Mike moaned, when the pressure in his back opening suddenly subsided and he could feel Henry´s hard erection at his tailbone.

Crap! He had never regretted a second boner, but the vampire had the recovery time of a teenager...

Mike wanted to get some distance to Fitzroy, but his knees gave in from under him and Henry took hold of him, letting him sag to the ground tiles. Mike felt his heart beating wildly and he felt a bit dizzy...

_To be continued _


	7. Chapter 7 Who is ever at peace with ?

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 7**_

**Who´s ever at peace with oneself? **

Crap! That had never happened to him before. In a mix of exhaustion and anger, Mike looked at Henry from muzzy eyes.

"You!...Damn bastard!" he pressed out with a weak voice. A voice that was now lacking of sharpness, he wanted it to sound enraged, but his tone was low and exhausted.

"I´m not damned, Mike. I still have my soul, even as a vampire..." Henry softly replied.

"Damned. Cursed. What so ever! If that fits better to your existential orientation, call ya a fucking bastard!" Mike grunted.

Bastard. Where the detective was right, he was right about it!

"Fucking...hm, you might be right with it, even when I prefer a less rude expression like getting someone laid..." Henry couldn´t hide a smirk, even when he felt some of Mike´s annoyance almost physically.

"A bit sensitive...ain´t ya?" Mike bit back. "Guess, you´re less sensitive in choosing your meal-on-legs: like a proven cop for example!" Who knows, what Fitzroy was up to when it came to...feeding. Where sucking or rather draining would meet it better, as in that cellar back then, Henry had almost drained him, when not Vicki would have stepped in between. And what had happened right yet a couple of minutes ago...

Henry ignored the last words out of reason. Mike was in a mood like glass on the edge of a shaking shelf

Henry grabbed for a small shelf beside the shower cabin, took out a large, soft towel and wrapped Mike in it. The detective´s hand was coming up in an attempt to ward him off. But a little move to the side was weakening the slap so far, that is was less a slap but a smack, though Henry didn´t slip out of its path totally, despite it would have been easy for him.

Maybe he also deserved it, Henry thought.

Mike´s hand sank down on the tiles and with trembling fingers he pulled the towel around him to hide his nudity, of which he was suddenly fully aware.

What the heck was he doing here actually...? What...had he done?

"Lemme be!" he snarled at Henry, staring at him in annoyance. His hand felt for the wall tiles. They were wet from water vapor and his fingers slipped, when he tried to pull up himself. His knees felt like pudding, shakily and feeble. Trying to get up on his feet from sitting, was ending up with his legs pulling out from under him. When Henry´s strong arms wouldn´t have caught him, his buttocks would simply have kissed the ground. Cuzzo?! What had that bastard done to him?

"Let me help you..." Henry offered carefully. Mike stared at him, but he didn´t answer. He felt when he was pulled up, unrelenting but gentle, ending up on his feet. On his feet, not midair as_...Henry´s hand closed around his throat, lifting him up until his feet were freely dangling midair, his eyes bled black pools...Vampire! _

"Better, Mike...?"

Instead of an answer, even a simple _thank you_, Henry only heard a deep grunting, that he might take as whatever he wanted. Inwardly, under his calm face, he couldn´t hide a smile. He had taken this so self-confident, strong and cool detective aback. Under all his anger he could feel confusion in Mike. Anger because he had things let gone that far. Confusion too about his physical reaction and his surrender to him...that he so willingly had searched for the physical contact. That had been getting intimate...

Mike was angrily looking at him, these amazing blue eyes of the detective seemed to have turned into liquid ice, when Henry opened the bathroom door. Without a word Mike went over to the bedroom. Henry wrapped a bath towel around his hips, following him slowly, when the detective sank down on the edge of Henry´s bed, keeping the towel around him with the left hand. Mike ignored it now, that this was the place where Henry commonly might allow himself a snack, where he would feed on his donors. Slowly his breath and his heartbeat were calming down and he felt his pulse calming too, the pounding in his loins subsided and the blood was distributing all over there again, where it was normally running. Heaven, he had never before been that aroused.

But when he has had sex with Vicki.

Mike shook his head. Why only had he been getting off with such a guy/man/vampire? Goddamn again...he was hetero! He had never been in men.

"Mike...?" Henry sounded low, softly.

"What do you want?" Mike growled low under his breath and stared at him in apparent anger. "What should that have been, just now? There? In there?" he directed over to the bathroom.

"Mike, I..." Henry came nearer, his eyes were cerulean, not these black pools in which one could get lost, deep...or terrifying. He knew all too well, how much these blackened eyes were connected with a nightmare for Mike. The detective had seen him in an absolute worst case scenario. Of which he hadn´t been completely innocent. Not only this! Celluci in the first case had brought him into this fatal situation. Since centuries he hadn´t been fighting in such a way for plain survival, starved out, bled out, loss of control. And the animal within, which he had always kept well behind the bars of its cage had not only been breaking to the surface, but his true nature had gained the upper hand...

Actually he had all reason to be really angry with Mike. It took Henry some effort to keep his voice calm and soft, to sound sympathetically. Not so easy when he looked into the angrily sparkling eyes of the detective, who warily looked at him...No. Who was staring at him. The heartbeat of the man in front of him was speeding up, his cheeks were still reddened by this flush, which the sex right before had spread over his light skin. Henry´s nostrils were widening by instinct, when he inhaled Mike´s scent. This scent of lust, sex and satisfaction which only he could notice, a part of his vampire nature. His sense of smell was preternatural in relation to that of ordinary humans, helping him in exactly assessing someone´s physical or mental condition.

"Mike...I wanted... I wanted to..." he began but the detective didn´t let him finish speaking.

"What? WHAT did you want? Trying out a cop´s ass? Once anything else as your normal _giocattoli_?" Henry didn´t need any translation of the Italian word that Celluci threw at him with a voice full of contempt: toy! He had been living in Venice long enough. "Guess, the cops of the TMP aren´t that often on your personal menu, unless there´s some secret agreement, an old blockhead like me didn´t get to until now!" Mike´s voice had become louder and in the moment, it didn´t bother him, if Vicki...who for sure was still anywhere in Henry´s home...might hear it. He simply was totally pissed off and his voice was dripping with cynicism.

"Mike, you´re no...toy...for me!" Henry was defending himself, feeling his own heartbeat speeding up too. No enragement now! He wouldn´t Mike allow to provoke him, because that was, what Mike wanted right now.

"Come of it!Well...! Then tell me: How have I been? Was it worth your effort?Did you enjoy it?" Mike´s icy eyes were boring into Henry´s and he swallowed hard, when he felt the rage driving tears into his eyes.

"Mike! Please, listen to me!" Henry had to keep attention that his voice would not drift off into that timbre, which enabled him to influence...to control his counterpart.

"For _what_?"

Henry moved nearer, determined to stand his ground in front of a very angry Mike. Rather near to him, though he could not only hear the detective´s rage, but literally smell it. He know that he was skating on thin ice and how fragile the peace was between them. But he couldn´t let that stand now between both of them. Mike was in need of an explanation now, he deserved one to finally understand, what and first of all, _why_ Henry had done that.

"What for?" Henry answered his question with a return. He paused to test out Mike´s reaction. Certainly the detective would immediately interrupt him, won´t let him finish speaking. And if only to be right, even when his remarks were nothing but innuendos by hurt self-conception.

Seconds went by.

Astonishingly Mike kept his mouth shut, only and still looking intensely at Henry, staying silent though. Either he had run out of arguments or he had simply grown tired of the affair. Henry could sense the physical exhaustion in Mike. The detective had been working all whole day long and then he had been fighting the giant hagfish in that tunnel with them. Thereby he had almost contorted his shoulder.

To speak about a Mike being well, was a plain lie.

Henry had felt the totally tensed muscles, when he had massaged his neck, shoulders and back. Mike wasn´t well at all, not in the least.

"Mike...I know, that you´re...in fear of me...!" Henry began.

"I don´t live in fear of you, Fitzroy!" Mike responded defiantly.

"However, you´re afraid of me. Cuz you´re having all reason. First you were afraid that I might harm Vicki. And when you had delivered me to the hands of that lunatic priest and I almost..." The next words didn´t come that easy from Henry´s lips. He breathed deeply, went on: "...I almost would have died, if you hadn´t come for me...you´ve seen, what I am. And what I´m able of in the worst case! You´ve been living thru when I´d have almost...pounced on...Vicki. Everything you could ever imagine of a vampire, seemed to become true..."

"You have attacked me!" Mike directed to his chest, his voice was pure accusation and in his voice was this tone of fear swinging under it, which Henry knew all too well. Once again...

"I...I don´t believe, that you would be satisfied by an excuse from my side, Mike! For that I know you all too well meanwhile, even when you won´t confess that."

"NO! An excuse won´t really be enough at all!" Mike bit back with bitterness. "Maybe you´ll try out forgiveness, Fitzroy! But that principle is rather unbeknownst to you! Or it´s not on your To-do-list" Mike´s voice was full of bitterness and Henry saw, when a tear stole from the corner of his eye.

"I´m capable of forgiveness, though, Mike!"

"I don´t need _your_ forgiveness, Fitzroy! But you would need mine! For almost killing me in that friggin cellar!" Mike snarled.

"That has happened. I´d almost killed you, if Vicki wouldn´t have stepped in between. You know that I had been out of control. That´s a fact. I can only tell you, that I´m so sorry about it. And...and only be hoping, that you´ll believe me, Mike...!"

"Yeah, and your way to beg for my forgiveness, vampire, is to ra..." Rape me, Mike wanted to say, but then he changed his mind. Fitzroy hadn´t raped him, When he, Mike, would have wanted it, then he would have Fitzroy simply thrown out of the shower. Plain and simple.

Cuzzo!

He has had...

...allowed it.

"Uhm...to have a quickie with me in the shower, Fitzroy!"

"Yes! And...? Did I hurt you, Mike? Did I...?" Henry was sounding a bit demanding. Provocative.

"No!" Mike had to confess. Henry didn´t rape him and he hadn´t even hurt him. But for the biting. In a reflex his hand moved to the scars in his shoulder neck curve, the scars from the attack in that cellar... Henry had bitten him again. And...

...damn, yeah! It had turned him on, Had so turned him on, that he´d come so damn hard like never before in his life.

Without him noticing it, Henry had come closer step by step. Now he sat down on the bed´s edge beside Mike, but without touching him with his hand. Mike was deeply in a turmoil; between fear, annoyance, shame about his compliance and the longing for understanding.

"Why didn´t you simply leave me alone, Henry?" Mike looked at him, his lower lip was slightly trembling. Then he noticed, how near to him Fitzroy was again. Abruptly he moved away a bit from Henry, defiantly turning his back to him like a noncompliant kid.

Well, so I´ll still talk to your back, Detective, Henry thought. But he wasn´t willing to stop yet.

"Because simply letting you alone, would change nothing, Mike! You´ve been in fear of me and still have been, even tonight in that stinky tunnel down at Lake Ontario!"

_And you don´t have the slightest imagination, Detective, how much effort it had quite costed me, to step down again into the tightness of a tunnel, into the muggy darkness. How much the fear, the memory of that night had me in its tight grip again, that night when you delivered me to Mendoza. I know what fear of death means!_

"It doesn´t change anything to let you all alone, because then you´d never have had the chance...to recognize...uhm, to show you, that there´s quite another side of what you´re thinking of me, Mike! Yes, I am a vampire! But I am no monster! And the only possibility to show you, that I have myself under control and that it can be quite a pleasant experience, when it happens in mutual agreement, was...was what I´ve done with you in there, Mike..."

Mike wanted to stay stubborn, turning his back on Henry, but anyway he couldn´t bring himself into it. Very slowly he turned his head, facing Henry.

Black eyes. Manipulation. That was what he was expecting. But there was nothing of all...

Henry´s eyes were cerulean and there were tears glistening in his eyes. Mike had been expecting everything, but not that!

"Your...your fear. You would carry that around with you for the rest of your life, also when you won´t admit that, Mike! And over the years it would become worse, cuz you never got the chance to convince yourself of the opposite!"

"I can cope with a lot of crap, Fitzroy! I´m a cop...just you´might have forgotten it!" Mike sounded defiantly out of desperation. There seemed to be no other defense, so he turned for attack. Like Vicki...in that point they were equal.

"Not with the fear of death! Mike! I know how it feels, believe me!" Henry´s voice was begging for understanding.

"You...you..." Mike swallowed hard. He knew what Henry was indicating and his throat seemed to constrict like under a ring of iron. That pale skin, covered by bruises, burns and cuts was all too vividly in his memories and he felt an icy coldness at the thought of it, that it had been him who had been responsible for that. Henry had survived.

But both were carrying their personal trauma with them.

"And the only..." Mike started.

"The only way to free you from your fear, seemed to me, to show you, that there´s also another...a controlled, gentle Henry Fitzroy!" Henry closed.

"And for that...you´re believing, that you can take me like you´re in the mood for!" Mike looked at Henry with an expression as if he had strong doubts about Henry´s mental health. "I´m...we are not any of your friggin property! Maybe this city belongs to you in matters of your sort! But I´m a human! No object, with which Your Highness might deal how you´re up to!" Mike cursed.

"Mike...!" Henry reached out with his hand when he wanted to grab for Mike´s wrist, what was thought as a soothing gesture, but Mike slashed at his hand.

"Do. Not. Touch. Me!"

Henry´s eyes turned black when his pupils were widening. Mike was so angry, that they won´t come forward here.

"MIKE!" Henry commanded. "Calm down, so that we can talk reasonably!" His voice had gotten yet this timbre, with which he could control someone. He didn´t want that, but couldn´t see another option to get the detective down onto a normal level again. Henry knew about Mike´s temper, his short-tempered manner and he wasn´t up for ending the now necessary and inevitable talk only because Mike was about to flip out.

Mike leaped to his feet. What Henry hadn´t forbidden him. By the dark eyes he could tell, that Henry had switched into full vampire mode and anyway he had the slight feeling, that his decisions were not completely his own. Vicki was totally resistant against these vampire tricks. And Mike hated it when Henry seemed to intrude his brain...or at least tried it. Stay outta my head! He stared at the vampire from a distance of a few steps, his eyes were glistening with moisture and he gulped down hard a couple of times to suppress the rising tears. But he didn´t manage it.

Henry warily watched him from a safe distance. It didn´t look to him as a good option to get up close and personal to him, after they had been more than close before in the shower cabin. It would only lead to that the detective was feeling cornered, that he might lose control and get rough...

Surely, Henry was outclassing him when it comes to strength and speed, but he wasn´t up now to a physical dispute.

The view of the detective was that of a hunted animal now, his pupils wide and the upper white of the eyeballs were visible. His breath came in fast and hart blows, when he gazed at Henry with clenched fists, which were...yet...still hanging down his sides. Henry could almost smell his tension, the fear. If he wouldn´t be damn carefully now, Mike would exactly be at that point, where he had been all these weeks before. Heaven, he was no psychologist, but centuries of life among humans had taught him to read in faces and postures to judge someone safely.

"Mike, please...listen to me..." Henry spoke with a gentle and low voice, as far as his own tension allowed it him in the moment.

Mike couldn´t turn his eyes from the vampire, his back at the wall. A position, as he became aware yet, in which he would be in a disadvantage when the vampire would attack him. But Henry made a step back, his palms turned upside.

No weapons, no attack.

But Fitzroy was wearing his weapons in his mouth, as Mike could clearly see now.

"Do you wanna bite me again? Hadn´t that blood of mine been enough? Earlier."

"Mike, I won´t harm you! Mike, I beg you...First of all; I didn´t take you, as I´d been up to! Would I´ve wanted that, that would have turned out completely different. And I don´t look at someone as my property! At the utmost as my confidants or my wards..."

"Wards! Oh forgive me, that this might have completely slipped from me, Henry! So, thus does your...protection instinct...look like! Sex to protect me from myself. That damn reminds me of these Bonobo chimps! Sex instead of a rough up or killing!

"Mike you don´t wanna compare me or you with primates, honestly..." Henry was sounding a bit indignantly.

"Animal! _Animal_ you obviously wanted to say. Who´s talking about the animal within constantly?! When you had been leaping at me like a starved out animal..."

Henry wanted to reply something, but Mike didn´t let him go on now, went on himself: "...yeap! Savaging me and don´t call that _drinking_ yet!" Mike extended his hand against Mike, a gesture; shut up! "There you didn´t care a damn shit about, if you ended up getting me killed! Not to talk about that friggin scar, that I´ll be wearing around for the very rest of my life and which I´ll have to explain everybody; No, it had been an accident! I got bitten by a friggin dog on duty! Yup, Fitzroy, yes! I´ve had damn fear, when you had been hanging at my throat! And I´m going nuts every time when I remind that! Always, when I see these...these...how do you call that? Fangs? Canines or what?!" Mike angrily wiped with the back of his hand over his eyes and cheeks, where tears were dripping down. They burnt in his eyes and forced him to blink unintentionally. When his glance cleared again, Henry was standing right in front of him and a cool hand was softly placed on his forearm.

"Please, Mike! I can´t make undone, what has happened. The fear and the pain I´ve caused you. I...I can only beg for your forgiveness. That´s...the only thing...I can do..." Henry hawed and in his face Mike could read now the same inner conflict, that was raging in his own chest now.

"Not making undone. To beg for forgiveness. Is it that, what you´re also doing with your victims, your dead victims?" Mike was sounding so bitterly now. "Only...that the dead can´t answer you anymore, Fitzroy!" He pierced Henry with his view. They already had this discussion once before. And he knew and he wanted it, that it was hurting Henry yet.

"I don´t kill senseless, Mike! This you must believe me. When I kill someone, then in a fight. Cuz he deserved it, so like this mad priest. I´m no killer, Mike! Otherwise your city would be full of corpses and I won´t be alive anymore. You know that!"

Mike swallowed hard. Again! Hell, his throat felt like a dried out desert. Had Henry taken so much blood tonight, that he was lacking of liquids again? They had this discussion in the beginning. And yet again! Vampire. Monster. Killer. He had discussed that with Vicki and she almost had punched him in the face again. Like in the moment when they had climbed out of the gully to search for Henry... Vicki was able to place damn hard, left handed hooks and sometimes Mike believed to feel the punch in his face. God, Vicki had been in such rage...

And she was right with it.

He had balled it up in that night and had deserved the beating. Perhaps worse...

For the first time since long, he really felt up for crying. The tears were already running and Mike cursed it inwardly, when he felt how much his hand was trembling under the vampire´s hand. For a mere second he felt the urge to go away from Henry abruptly, to throw around literally and to storm out of the room.

Also Henry seemed to get that.

"No, Mike...don´t do that..." he begged in a low voice. His hands closed around Mike´s upper arms, his fingers could feel the heat of the mortal body under his hands. So warm, so... Not now! Henry demanded himself. It had been an amazing moment. But that´s all. Anytime again...later perhaps. If ever... He breathed out in a gasp.

Mike sighed, closed his lids for a mere second and gulped down hard, then he relaxed a bit, when Henry was looking right into his eyes...his eyes being cerulean again, not black. Not _vamped-out_ …

Crap! Pull yourself friggin together! He commanded. That would be the last of all, when he would start crying in here now like a kid! He was a cop, a damn good cop! And as such he had to be able to cope with it! He had already seen more tragedies. Alone and together with Vicki. Mike felt the grip around his upper arms becoming more definitely. Not violently, but with gentle pressure.

"Come on, Mike, let´s sit down..." Henry looked at him.

"I don´t want that you...again. I don´t wanna that now, Fitzroy! I´m not up to it..." Mike whispered defensively.

"Up to what, Mike?" Henry believed to know what Mike was indicating. Mike was afraid of or unwilling or whatever...that he, Henry, would only want one thing from him again. Sex. Inwardly he shook his head in disbelief. Hopefully he hadn´t make things worse instead of help, he thought.

"I won´t do anything, Mike! Just wanna sit and talk to each other. Nothing else!"

In a reflex Mike reached for his bath towel when it started to slip, when he moved over to the bed. Henry didn´t seem to notice it or he just intentionally didn´t say anything. They sat down on the bed´s edge. Mike didn´t feel comfortable with it, but didn´t mention it from his side, he only breathed deeply and extended. He avoided it to look at Henry, looking past him, fixing any point at the terracotta colored wall. Heaven, why had the guy let the walls be painted in this color? Mike remarked that his thought were drifting off. Why to care about wall paint in this situation? Relax, he ordered himself. Breathe deep into your belly. In and out. Anything like that the guy had said, who was teaching yoga.

But Mike tended so much to act as a workaholic and had it ever been, especially when it came to a very finicky case. God, he often enough was missing Vicki so much. Sometimes he really was under pressure, but anyway it always had kept him running. Like a machine that needed of a certain working stress for well functioning. There he had neither felt the urge nor has had the time to care about yoga or anything else. Deep relaxation, good and well. H could relax when he fell asleep in time. Or when he had perfect sex with Vicki.

Henry was sitting there motionless, watching Mike inconspicuously, hearing when his heartbeat was calming down.

Crap! If Henry still had him under his mental thumb again. It doesn´t probably work on Vicki, as Fitzroy once had mentioned. He breathed in and out noisily, took in air with a sigh, feeling how shakily he was inside. Cuzzo, that didn´t happen to him usually. That tour in the shower just before couldn´t have thrown him off the track that way.

Get a grip!

Mike turned his head a bit to the side, trying to look at the vampire out of the corner of his eye, without him noticing it. Searching for his eyes, for their color. Though Fitzroy´s eye-thing wasn´t always a reliable indicator of his mood, Mike told to himself, but..that he knew, that then he won´t have that man in front of him, which he pretended to be...but quite clear the...vampire.

The only thing, that was definitely clear about Fitzroy at all!

The vampire´s eyes were blue. Not...

...dangerously.

Henry was waiting patiently until Mike had relaxed and the view of the detective was focused on him. Okay. His heartbeat was calm and steady finally...the base for a reasonable talk.

"Mike, it might be that, cuz of Vicki, we will...uhm...work together in the future..." Henry intentionally said _will_, avoiding the words _will have_. He knew that he couldn´t force Mike to work together with them, but on the other side it would become very difficult and tiring to keep the detective off from mixing into Vicki´s cases, even when he thought it to be necessary.

"What shall that be? Vicki isn´t part of the homicide anymore, even she´s not in the troupe anymore. She´s a freelancer. Have you forgotten that?"

"No! I didn´t forget that, Mike. But as I Vicki know, this won´t be the last time, that she brings us together to solve a case. And cuz of this I want, that you...that our relation among us...when it comes to cope with each other, becomes somewhat more relaxed..." Henry carefully began.

"Relaxed? I am relaxed!" Mike protested.

"No...you aren´t...!" Henry calmly replied. "Your heartbeat tells me that you´re not that relaxed. We can´t go on like before. When you´re...I don´t like to say it that way and you won´t like to hear it the less...when you´re afraid of me, Mike!"

"How dare you...that I´m afraid of you? Is it...what all people are feeling, who have to cope with you? Fear? Do you even enjoy that?" Mike started to attack him again. Henry sighed. This detective was a really challenge, when it came to a reasonable discussion without old prejudices getting involved.

"I confess, that the blood of a person, who´s feeling fear, has another taste than the blood in the thralls of mutual passion, Mike. What doesn´t mean that I prefer it!" But sometimes he preferred the taste of adrenaline, when he...taught an individual a lesson. Like these three guys in the backyard of the club where he had met Vicki for the first time. Before Mike could interrupt him, he went on: "Normally I prefer it, when my partners participate willingly...so like...you tonight, Mike." Henry looked at him.

"You...you hadn´t probably then...I mean, uhm, I hate it, when anybody...is mixing up my brain. Did you get that?"

"I didn´t manipulate you. Mike! Honor bright!" Henry lifted his fingers like for an oath.

Shall I believe him, Mike asked skeptically. He had already experienced it more than once, how the vampire had somebody manipulated or made his puppet on a string.

"And I shall believe that!? Great! I´m a cop and then one doesn´t believe so easily, what he hears!" Mike threw in and consciously looked into Henry´s eyes. Though when everybody was warning of looking into a vampire´s eyes.

"That´s the problem with you, Mike..." Henry sighed. "You should simply trust me. Vicki trusts me too. And I´m trusting you, because _she_ trusts you!" Though this trust had almost cost him his immortal life. But he was still living so long, that he could estimate rather well with whom he had to cope. And Mike was the straight cop. That he had confirmed by searching for him with Vicki, after he had realized, that he had make a mistake. Mike wasn´t a bad guy at all, only the ever skeptical. Perhaps that had to do with his job, in which it was all about evidences always and not about a _probably_ or _perhaps_.

"And for testing our trust into each other, you have done that with me, just before..." Mike nodded in direction of the bathroom.

"Done with you, just before? What has Henry done with you, just before?" Vicki´s voice was suddenly sounding through the bedroom.

Mike literally whirled around, looking at Vicki like at an alien from outer space. His heart was in his mouth. Her sudden appearance had almost scared the shit out of him, like a kid that had been caught on something forbidden.

"Damn it! Vic! Do you have bags in front of the doors? Knocking at a door is unbeknownst to you, ain´t it!?" he barked at her to hide his scare behind anger. Hopefully his face won´t be reddened. Or he probably had good luck and it was dim enough in the room, so that Vicki´s weak eyes wouldn´t notice the heat in his face which he was suddenly feeling.

"Sorry..." she casually gave back with a shrug of her shoulders. "I thought you might be ready with showering cuz the water doesn´t run anymore since a while ago..." Vicki laconically replied and she threw a look at the bath towel, tat Mike had wrapped around his hips. Henry was only wearing his boxer shorts and he had placed a towel on his shoulders to rub his wet hair dry.

"I would like a shower too, Mike" she looked at him, shrugging her shoulders.

"Over there, in the hallway, there´s a guest bathroom, Vicki!" Mike directed to the bedroom doors, vaguely into the direction, where the guest bathroom was lying. Beside the kitchen and the library. His tone said it all. "Beside, Henry and I have to talk about the case we have solved tonight."

"You´ve always been a bad liar, Mike! That´s the problem with you...because you´re a too straight cop, to lie at me. At..."

"Victoria! Get out! Immediately! Otherwise..." Mike growled.

"Otherwise what? Do you wanna arrest me, put cuffs on me?" Gray-green eyes literally pierced him. Vicki put her hands on her hips, not willing to lose ground.

"So, Mike, what had Henry done with you...just before?" Her voice was icy, her mind was going thru options of what Mike could mean by it.

"I almost contorted my shoulder in that damn tunnel and Henry has some...chiropractic skills. At least my shoulder feels better yet. The pain has subsided, that´s what he has done! Satisfied? And now it would be very kind when you´d be leaving again, so that Henry and I can continue our official conversation." Mike looked at her with an icy expression

"The last _official conversation_ which you had with Henry, had been ending in him almost getting killed. So far to...official!" Vicki angrily snarled.

"Do you have to dwell upon that theme over and over again, Vicki? Slowly I´m tired of it! And I guess...Henry too! And when you would let us...please..." Mike had to force himself to a please: "let us continue our conversation! Please, Vicki! Go showering over there and let me at peace!" After angrily Mike was now sounding rather resigned. Vicki had some talent to stomp around on one´s nerves sometimes.

"Do whatever you want, Mike! But don´t come to me after it, asking me to help you with anything, when..."

"Usually the case is contrary. Who´s it, to come running along with all that freaking stuff all the time? But you trying out normality...didn´t end up any better, when I may remind you at this pretty large hole of yours..."

"No hole! A cut, Mike! It was a cut! I ain´t got shot, I got almost slashed my guts out!" she reminded him of the Fulton-Hell´s Dust-case.

"Hole! Cut! Doesn´t matter what! You almost got killed once again, Vic!"

"Once again!? What does that mean, once..._again_?" Her brows knitted.

"Yup! First you almost became the victim of this hellish asshole Astaroth, then you got almost killed by a zombie queen, then by a freaked-out plush bear and then you get into a fight with a cannibalistic ice bear mutation. So a normal attempted murder is an exception to mark red in the calendar, cuz it´s so stinking normally, that it doesn´t fit into your tabulae vitae, _Victoria_!" Mike knew that Vicki hated it, when he or anybody else addressed her by her full first name.

"I don´t play in your league anymore? Already forgotten? And I don´t confront you always with the fact, that you hadn´t been here when it went really bad for me!? As the world plays; Crap happens. And sometimes it´s the bullshitoftheweek, if you wanna it or not, Michael Celluci!" Vicki paid back with the same coin, being well aware, that Mike hated it, when he was either called Michael or Detective Celluci. For Vicki he had always simply been Mike, nothing else.

Mike glanced at her angrily. His father had always called him Michael Celluci, before the fist or the belt had been smashing down again. Often enough on his naked buttocks. The memories of it were equally hurting than the beats themselves. In bitterness he stated, that Vicki has had it better. Her father had simply run off instead of roughing up his family.

Vicki had pulled the white card again. Like always.

Only that she doesn´t deserve that shit with her eyes, he thought. It always hit the best only, he thought bitterly.

"Nevertheless you merely missed me, when I´ve been over there in B.C.. You´ve had _best _care." Mike directed to Henry.

Henry had been watching listening to all that stuff long enough now for his taste. The conversation between these two stubborn heads seemed slowly to run out of track again. That wasn´t the first time...and won´t be the last time, he thought with an inner sigh...that Mike and Vicki went cats and dogs at each other.

"Vicki! Detective! Please!" Henry interrupted them in a very determined tone. Now he had addressed Mike with his rank of duty intentionally, because that was it, what Vicki was used to. She would have grown suspiciously with her P.I. instincts yet, when he´d have suddenly chosen confidential form of address. And what had happened in the bathroom a short while again, had gone far beyond chiropractic help... Vicki would draw her conclusions from a _Mike_ and a _bathroom,_ which would be correct, but he didn´t want to expose Mike in front of her. The unexpected cooperation by the detective had been astonishing enough and Henry wasn´t sure, if it had been a just-this-once in Mike´s opinion or if Vicki probably knew more about Mike´s bed habits, than she knew by her own experience. Because she had been Mike´s lover, beside their official relation.

Henry was pretty well aware, that especially men tended to keep this kind of affinity hidden and Henry never exposed his partners.

"I beg you...we all are tired now and I don´t believe that it makes any sense, to argue about such a thing!" Henry started. He put all patience and calmness in his voice, so that the discussion won´t escalate further.

"What will both of you have to talk about it in confidence and officially? When it´s cause of that slime monster; after all I´m and I´ve been involved in it too! So!?" Vicki sounded a bit more peaceful, but only a little bit. Henry knew her all to well meanwhile, her sharp tongue and her brash gab and bearing.

"Henry, this case is business of all of us! Why do you Mike allow to scold me that way?" she grumbled with a crabby expression on her face.

"Vicki! Mike didn´t want to scold you..." Henry tried to soothe her, but he noticed, that Vicki was spoiling for a fight, when she unflinching went on.

"I think, Mike is old enough, to talk for himself!" she bashed him without drawing a breath, her hands being put on her hips. Her grayish-green eyes were staring right into Henry´s blue ones. Henry could imagine, like she was standing in front of him now, that earlier on duty, she had intimidated some opponents by the sheer force of her voice and her physical presence. And when this didn´t help, she went on attack with her fists or her baton. This woman was really...woaw.

"So, _Mike_!" she underlined his first name. To make clear of what the thought about if when Henry would take the word again instead of Mike. The view she shot at Henry, was saying enough. "What have you been talking about with Henry, that I´m not allowed to hear?! When you help me, you wanna know too every detail, every information which I have..."

"Can´t I talk about anything with Henry, in confidence, what is only my and his business?!" Mike groaned angrily.

"As far as it affects me...when you´re referring to me, especially to both of your relation to me...or if you, Mike...dare to give him hints how he has to handle me...! In difference to your normal awkward jealousy..."

"_Me._..? I´m not jealous, Vicki!" Mike directed indignantly on himself. "Whom did this bitch of a jealousy fury attack?! And I really dunno, what you´re imagining always. Slowly I´m sick of it!" Mike leaped up to his feet, grabbing in a reflex for the towel, that threatened to drop...again...by the abrupt move. Crap! He even hadn´t taken so time to pull on a boxers. How so, when his clothing down to the underwear was stinking of hagfish-paste-anything? And promptly Mike got it, that, showering or not, he was confronted by the question how he could get home with decency. Helplessly he looked down at his towel wrapped hips and naked legs.

Damn it!

That day had started like bullshit, but the end was simply a catastrophe!

Henry heard the tapp tapp of Mike´s bare soles of his feet on the dark wooden planks, when Mike now...seemingly a bit disoriented...but first of all in helpless anger, was commuting through the bedroom. And that definitely didn´t depend now on their heated discussion!

"Detective?" Henry asked. Then, when Mike didn´t react to him, he used a careful: "Uhm...Mike...?!"

Mike´s head whirled around, when he got it, that it was him, who had been addressed.

"_What_? What´s up, Fitzroy?" Mike snarled at him.

"I have a suggestion, Detective, about your clothing, that at least in the moment, is in an unusable condition:...I..."

"What?! Do you wanna borrow me your briefs?" He didn´t sound funny at all.

Henry shook his head no, knowing, that even when he would have liked to, the size of the taller man, who Mike was...would be standing in its path.

"I might call Ms. Fennel and beg her to come over here, so that you might give her your latchkeys and she will get you fresh clothes from home..."

Mike wanted to give a bad tempered answer, but fortunately he took a moment to think of it before he might have barked at Henry. At least he thought of it long enough to value the suggestion as a reasonable one.

"Okay! Seems to be the only damn possibility how I´ll get out of here, without being kicked out of duty...cause of causing public nuisance." He snatched up the towel around his hips, carefully sitting down on the edge of the bed again, his head resting on his hands. He didn´t look enraged anymore, only very tired.

Henry disappeared into the room, that was bordering on the bedroom and was a kind of an accessible wardrobe. Within few seconds he was back, carrying something on his arm, what turned out to be a dressing gown. Indeed not the red one with these broad bordure at the sleeves, which Henry usually wore, but it was made of warm, soft and dark blue flannel.

"Here...please! Take that until Ms. Fennel will be back with clothing for you..." he offered Mike the gown, who looked up in surprise. First he was hesitating, but that thing was better than desperately clinging to the edge of the bed with crossed legs and a towel wrapped around him.

"Thanks..." he mumbled and Henry laid the dressing gown on the bed, turning to Vicki.

He put his hand on Vicki´s arm, whispered: "Might to come once...? Let´s have a word, Vicki! Please..."

Vicki shot a last glance at Mike, then she followed Henry into the living-room.

"What was up there, Henry?" Skeptically she knitted her brows, then she took her glasses off her nose and rubbed the base of her nose: a typical gesture when she was thoughtful or tired.

"That´s what I´m asking _you_, Vicki!" Henry replied without letting his eyes from her face.

She kept silent for a moment and Henry made use of the pause or deferral to give her an explanation himself: "I talked to Mike before about a case, that´s right. About my...case, to be correct, And that´s me."

"Your case? Why so? That hagfish thing wasn´t your case, though. Not like that case with Norman and Astaroth." she looked at him questioning.

"Vicki! You know what had happened not so long ago: Mike had gotten me in big trouble, cause he has fallen prey to that lying talk of this lunatic Mendoza. I even don´t blame Mike for it, but that he was overly eager and clueless when it comes to my person. I knew this priest way better. He made a bloody nuisance of himself, when my father had been still alive, appearing on court in the orbit of the Spanish ambassador and Catherine of Aragon..."

"I´m understanding..."

"Mike´s blank-faced acting almost killed me and I have...almost killed Mike. So both of us have their part of guilt, failure and Mike has...since I attacked him in this cellar...has fear of me! I regret to the deepest degree, what has happened and I myself can understand his fear, he feels in my presence. In his situation I´d have felt the same fear. Even I, Vicki..." Henry swallowed hard: "...I had fear when I was tied to that damned wooden cross. I´m living since so long, but despite it...Even I have felt blank fear of death in that moment, fear...to die. Cause...should I at any day far away choose to take my way out into the sun...then it´s utterly and alone my decision when and why! And not that of any freaked-out lunatic..."

Vicki looked at him, suddenly understanding what both of them were carrying around with them. How many feelings of fear and guilt. And Mike was, despite all his strength, which he had as a human, not immune against the fear to be confronted with death. No mortal was immune against pure fear of death, also when on the ground of the cellar, he had shrugged that off with a snide remark. Vicki knew from the police service, that victims of violence got confronted with fear, turning to the edge of collapse, later on when the situation had seemingly ended. The end often was the beginning...

When the adrenaline had gone, the fear was coming, the nightmares...

Who knows, which nightmares Henry was carrying around. In the silent moments before the sun was rising and nailing him down in daytime sleep.

_To be continued_


	8. 8 Will there ever be any peace left

**Myxine- What the hell is that?**

_**Chapter 8**_

**Will there ever be any peace left?**

"Henry, Mike...he still wasn´t aware, what he was wreaking by his officiousness. I don´t you if you can ever forgive him the shit he has caused. I only know that he´s painfully sorry for it and..." Vicki began.

"Vicki, I´ve forgiven him since long. Everybody makes mistakes. I´m not free of mistakes too, even when I, cause I´m living so long, have some certain experience, which gives me some advantage in some situations."

"Shall this calm me down now? Are we at the point of mutuality now?" Vicki looked at him, trying to hide the wave of cynicism that threatened to take hold of her heart.

"I don´t know it, Vicki! Honestly. I´m the more concerned about another circumstance..."

"And which one? Don´t you trust Mike anymore? Is it that?" She looked at him with a piercing glance.

"When I won´t trust him anymore, I´d have seen myself being left over with only one option: to end the situation my way, Vicki, because I won´t run away anymore from my territory. Not more since I once have abandoned a territory cause of Philippe"

"Philippe? Who´s that? Another vampire? You´re speaking of territories, so I suspect that it is this territorial instinct thing you´ve been speaking of. Who´s Philippe?"

"Vicki, that´s a long time ago. I´ve been still very young then...so to say...It had gone up to a fight, call it a battle! Humans died and I fled. I had no other choice, but that´s no theme now."

"So! The great vampire does not like to talk about defeat! Clear! That´s kinda embarrassing anyway!" Vicki began to make a dig at him, though she knew that she was right about to do, what she could best: to affront people brusque. Her cynicism was often hard to bear and Henry asked himself, how Mike had been coping with it.

She could be so cold...

"To get back to the point before, Vicki. And I know right yet exactly, that you won´t like that, but I will have cleared it up now..." Henry looked at her seriously.

"Uhm, you want to resign our working partnership now!?" she tried to test him. But that didn´t sound of that. For a mere second Henry asked himself, how she came up with that now, this thought. How deeply sitting was _her_ mistrust, _her_ fear...? Anything else could not have caused her question. He wasn´t up to discuss her eye disease yet.

"Vicki, I´ll resign nothing! Victoria, I´ve promised you that I´ll protect you. I was absolutely determined to keep my and this promise given to you, under all circumstances. And then I was about and up to..." Henry swallowed hard, breathing deeply a couple of times, before he brought out: "...to kill you..." His voice was...

…trembling.

"Henry, you didn´t kill me as I´m very much alive yet. Nor hurt me. But for that I did some pratfall, when I kissed the ground."

"Victoria, that´s not the time for a groaner. I´m talking about almost breaking my promise. Do you know what that means to me? Do you only have_ an imagination_ of it, Vicki?"

At least he doesn´t use the abhorred _Victoria_ yet, Vicki thought. "Henry, you´ve been hurt, almost being bled out, halfway starved. In that moment you haven´t been you anymore. But I wasn´t...afraid...of you"

"Yes! That hadn´t been me anymore. Not the me that you know. The more the me I´ve warned you about that you shall not forget who and what I am! In reality. And don´t lie to me, Vicki! You have had fear of me!"

"Henry, you know..."

"Vicki, I´ve smelled your fear! Don´t forget that all my senses are more sensible multiple times, far more developed than that of a human, since I got turned. Normally...sometimes there are situations, when you enjoy it. To feel the fear of a potential victim, to smell it and then to drink the blood and with it the fear. One can get lost in it, when there´s no control and the animal within is getting the upper hand. But when...but when I...hunted you...oh God, yes...hunted you, Vicki...it had been nothing else! There I felt your fear like nothing else. Physically. And it did hurt! Did hurt more than any move of my body, more than all these wounds, bruises and partially fractured bones in my tortured body..." Henry looked at her and he had a glistening in his eyes, that she could misinterpret in the next moment, when tears were running down his cheeks.

"Henry! Henry...I beg you!" Spontaneously she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him to her, when he didn´t fend her off and she was feeling the unashamedly trembling of his shoulders, when his head sank against her shoulder. In another situation he would have enjoyed it, would have tried to take advantage of it and force it forward, that Vicki was so amenable to him. Rarely she was showing up as being such...emotionally...open. She wasn´t shrinking from any craziness, but emotions?

And Henry wasn´t up to put upon her.

The only thing that he himself was putting upon to, was the comfort that she was offering him now by her closeness and what he was inwardly needing right now. The urge for forgiveness and for being understood and for being taken as what he was. And how he was.

There was not a hell of a lot humans, who knew, what he was and where he was allowed to let his masks drop. And little enough humans who were able to accept his true nature. Vicki was one of them. She was accepting him as he was and without drawing a breath, without any when and but. He knew that he sometimes was demanding much from her, first of all when he threatened to cross his own borders, like not long ago in that cellar of the church. The realization to have shaken her trust to the core, to see her so full of fear, that was the worst what Mendoza could do to him, by robbing him of all his controls, until only the raw predator had been left over from him.

"Vicki, I..."

"Henry, please! You stopped by yourself! You have stopped yourself, when you have attacked Mike! Nobody else could have stopped you in that moment if you wouldn´t have wanted it yourself!" she pressed on him.

In that situation; being full of fear for Mike, with the realization that Henry was out of control, she had tried to reach him in his assumed fury, though. These human remains he was clinging so dearly to normally, to appeal to his human core, that had to be still there, anywhere deep under this tortured creature.

_In horror she reminded that piece of wood, that smashed leg of a chair in her shaking hands, her voice that was trembling, desperately appealing to him; "Don´t make me, Henry!" when she was staring in this almost darkness of that cellar hole with almost useless eyes. And the single poor source of light that was now lighting up a terrifyingly empty wooden cross. Never before in her life she had been this kinda...hunted._

_Being hunted by anything/anybody that or who was so reduced to his basic instincts. Anywhere in her brain, a remain of it, was understanding why Henry was acting such way and not anyway else in this disastrous situation. But the realization that he could go thru such a horrifying turn...and he had warned her of himself, dear God, more than once...was whipping through the other part of her mind, so that she would have wanted to shout No No._

_Someone who she had trusted with her life to._

_And who was about to shake that trust to the very foundations. _

_Henry is a killer! Plain and simple, Vicki! She could have bashed Mike for it. In that moment in this dirty, stinking cellar she got hit by the realization like by a caustic poison, that Mike might be right with it and would stay being right with it. That couldn´t and won´t be allowed to become true!_

_That could not be ending like that! She must not lose Henry like that...!_

_When her heart was in her mouth, she didn´t know from what. When her body reacted to cope with the danger and the situation. Her trained body reacted totally naturally. A cooperation of muscles and reflexes, when she threw herself against the door. Ridiculous when one thought of the speed to which even a hurt, weakened vampire...God, that was Henry! Not anyone!...was able to._

"Vicki...?"

_A voice. His voice. Hands grabbed her, taking hold of her and a hand was entwining around her pony tail, her head was pulled backwards and she fought._

_The door flew open and Mike was storming in._

_She was whirled to the side, hitting ground, slipping and she even didn´t know who had thrown her to the ground. It didn´t matter anymore in the next moment, when Mike screamed like a rabbit... Henry was hanging on him and before Mike turned his face aside, she heard an animalistic growl, teeth like that of a wolf and eyes, blacker than night, bent over Mike and dragged him halfway to the ground._

"Vicki...?"

_God, he kills Mike! Leaping up...heaven, her body reacted like in slow motion in relation to that what was happening in front of her. She was running like thru thick, liquid ice water before she finally...finally reached both men...no, one man and the vampire, her mind was hammering into her. Her emotions were protesting. The chair leg had dropped from her hands long ago, all what she could bring up on battlefield against the vampire...Heaven! That´s Henry! Henry!...were her mortal strength and her voice. Her physical strength would by far be not enough, to simply pull Henry off from Mike. And she knew that she had only a few moments, not even minutes, when she wanted to rescue Mike, whose scream had turned in agonized groans, now, when Henry was ravaging his throat like an animal._

_Raging hunger._

_Zero control._

"Vicki...?!"

_She pulled at Henry what had absolutely no effect. He didn´t let go and Mike groaned loudly. Heaven! He would die and when she pulled at Henry, who didn´t let go, it would be speeding up the process, when his deeply sunken in fangs would rip Mike´s throat to pieces like a demon´s claw._

_Vampire bites tend to be discrete._

_But that was no normal drinking! Seconds went by. Or were it only one or two?_

_Vicki gave up in trying to use raw force, with which she would only cause Mike severe damage, but won´t get Henry away from him. Her thoughts were tumbling over. Henry...he was...she had to..._

_That thought seemed to be the most absurd one of the world._

_Henry had always wanted that she would give in to his courting, what she always blocked. And of_ _all things to do...that; to appeal to his feelings for her, to distract him from Mike, to get him away from Mike..._

"_Stop! Henry stop! You´re killing him, Henry! Henry! Stop! Stop it, Henry!"_

_Her voice was hectically, full of fear for Mike. For sure not that what was needed, to get Henry fixed on her, to appeal to that Henry, that still had to be stuck anywhere under the creature, deep inside the man she knew and who now seemed to be halfway, no, completely mad by hunger._

"_Stop, Henry!" she tried to give her voice a disarming tone, trying to reach the Henry deep inside the Henry, who was loving her so dearly._

_She bent deep down on both of them, feeling how much Mike´s strength was fading away, how near he was to drop to the ground and into unconsciousness, when she brought her lips directly to Henry´s ear, forcing her hand to move between both bodies and feeling for the leather belt which separated Henry´s tortured upper body from his lower belly._

"_Henry, stop it! Let go! Please Henry! Please!" she brought out, forcing her trembling hand on the cold, pale flesh that was now way too warm. Almost shrinking back, when her fingers unintentionally touched the burn, feeling Henry´s belly twitch, causing him to hiss under the terrible sound of sucking. Carefully she searched for another area, hoping for the part of a second, that she would not cause him additional pain. She was feeling at hard bulge at his groins, pressing against Mike. God! How could he...? In his condition...?_

_But Henry was too distracted to feel anything else but hunger, that must him drive mad. Her other hand felt for Henry´s chin._

"_Please, Henry..." she whispered._

_Her fingers felt that she could get hold of Henry´s chin and when he lifted his lips from Mike´s skin for a second, to breathe himself before he went on with drinking, she tried to turn his face to her. Her other hand was lying on that area of his belly muscles which was above his belt. Without being able to look down, she stroked his abdominal wall with her hand, trying to put something like tenderness into the touching, despite her own awful tension, into her voice..._

_Not so easy, to be gentle, disarming, when one tried to save a life by it._

_Mike´s life._

"Vicki?"

_Black eyes were looking at her. Her fingers were sticky from blood, Mike´s blood that was running down his chin, seeping thru her fingers. Henry´s breath...he was panting into her hand like a dog, her hand that was covering his chin, his lower lip, when she, more in a reflex, was more smearing the blood with her fingers and her palm, than she was wiping it off._

"_Henry, please...!" she begged and the look into his eyes, which were staring at her in agony and with a feverish glossiness, black pools in a face as pale as death, was driving hot and cold shudders down her spine, shoving up a feeling of nausea in her stomach._

_God, she had seen dead people, injured people, victims of violence. That was her job._

_Had been her job._

_But to look now in Henry´s eyes, the eyes of someone she personally knew, no anonymous person, not this common distance officer-victim, which protected oneself from getting involved too deeply... His view threatened to pull her legs from under her for a moment, threatened to make her stagger and to get drowned in a swamp of nausea, concern, guilt and pity. _

_God, Henry!_

_Her inside cried out._

_He´ll heal! He´s a vampire! He won´t die as long as nobody would pull him out into sunlight! He will heal! Henry will... her brain was hammering like a prayer wheel into her. _

_She knelt down at Mike´s side, her hand was at his ravaged throat. Her fingers were trembling too much to feel for a pulse. Anywhere beside her was Henry, when Mike pressed a little key into her hand._

"_Turn...turn that...clock...wise!" He breathed stertorously. She only hoped that she had understood him correctly. She had to force her eyes to not disobey service in the uncertain light and not to lock up from the sight which Henry gave, who looked as if his last strength would fade away from him any moment. The liberation from his ties and his attack on her and Mike must have cost him his last resources. _

"Vicki!"

_With as much calmness as a she was able to with her fingers that were slippery from Mike´s blood, she fumbled with the tiny cross, shoving it into the little keyhole and she prayed to God, that clockwise was right, when she turned it in the lock of the Illuminacion del Sol. Her other hand tried to stabilize Henry, to support him who was more crouching than kneeling beside her and Mike. Henry´s face was a mask of agony and she could smell the strong bitter scent of burnt flesh on him. His flesh. His skin was pale, unnaturally grayish and covered with dried blood, bruises, cuts, abrasions and dirt. His breath came in raspy gasps and she could tell by it, that his body fought for oxygen, caused by the loss of blood._

_The tiny key got hold, turning in its hole..._

_Henry mouth opened, his fangs and lips were red with blood..._

_...and he screamed._

_Screamed with pain. A scream that reverberated from the walls and the ceiling, was burning in her ears. Never before she had heard him screaming that way. Agony._

_Her heart threatened to stop. Panic was creeping up within her. Wrong direction! Wrong direction!_

_But then Henry fell silent, seemed to stop breathing, before he draw a deep intake of air and was waveringly coming up to his feet with a deep sigh. The Illuminacion...dropped to the ground with a metallic noise, exposing creepy, bleeding holes in his chest. For a mere second she could see anything like a needle or a little tube in its center, that slipped back into the the sun shaped item._

"_Henry!"_

"Vicki? Vicki!"

Somebody was shaking her by her shoulders. Goodness, why was her mouth so dry? The shaking went on and Vicki turned her head.

Henry was standing in front of her, holding her by her shoulders and he stopped, when she finally looked at him. She was looking at him like a being from a strange world or as if she had woken up from a dream. Vicki barely got it, that his cool hands moved down her forearms, down to her wrists. Henry turned her palms up and watched her wrists, then he breathed with relief.

No flaming tattoo marks.

"Vicki! What was up?" He sounded deeply concerned.

"How? How...what was up?"

"Vic, I´ve addressed you multiple times, but you didn´t react to me! What was going on with you?" His eyes looked into hers, searching in them for...

She seemed to wake up, from whatsoever.

"Nothing has happened! I´ve thought about something, reminded me..." Her voice sounded calm and firm like usually.

"Don´t tell me, nothing has happened! There has happened way too much! Though I see..." his thumb wiped lightly over her cheek, over her cheekbone and he scented the salt in her tears, which secretly dripped down her cheeks. Vicki´s hand moved up and she sniffed lowly, wanted to wipe over her cheek angrily, but Henry´s right hand caught her midair.

"Not! Vicki, please..."

"It´s nothing, Henry! We should call Coreen yet! Mike will..." she lied all the way to the bank. Henry was still standing in front of her, his cerulean eyes looked softly at her, his face questioning.

"There´s still time! Detective Celluci will survive in my dressing gown also a couple of minutes longer." He grabbed upwards, stroking a blonde strand of hair from her forehead, that had anyway slipped from the ribbon of her pony tail. Her tousled hair reminded him when she had been tied up to that old chair in the cellar... when her hair had fallen in her face and she unsuccessfully fought with it, as her hands were behind her back. In another situation it might have looked cute...a helpless Vicki and her facial expression was priceless. Was there anything to throw her out of track?

"Vicki, please! I´m seeing though...I wanna know right now, what´s going on. But because of nothing, one does not start to cry on memories..." he gently began.

"I don´t cry! She protested.

"No, naturally not! There´s only water running from your eyes, cuz you can´t go to the toilet in the moment to empty your bladder! _How convenient_!" he scoffed. Henry was fully aware, that this wasn´t the opening that might Vicki convince into opening up this once and not to lock up inwardly like usually.

Probably she would answer by defiance. He was waiting patiently, his view went off her eyes and his hands were lying on her forearms with some determination.

"I´ve thought over my situation!" Vicki replied and Henry could hear her mock coolness under it. But she wasn´t by far that cool, as she now wanted to pretend. Her seemingly unresponsiveness contrary to her tears was speaking an all to definite language.

_Thinking over her situation_.

Wanted she to put the theme on her eyes again, in an attempt to distract him from her true problem?

"I´m not willing to discuss about your RP, just you´re trying that, Vicki! Because I don´t believe it you! Your problem is definitely lying anywhere else.

Vicki wanted to protest but he didn´t let her get a word in edgewise, going on:

"You´ve been mentioning memories, Vicki! Is it about...the cellar?"

Vicki had looked to the side, for what she had to turn her head slightly to get the rest of the living-room into her restricted angle of view, avoiding his view. Now she swallowed and looked st him again. She only noticed on the brink, when she only nodded for convenience, that his fingers were wandering over her temple, stroking it gently. Not possessive, but soft and carefully.

"God, Vicki...what have I...what have I only done? Done to you? That you´re having such...fear."

"You didn´t do that to me, Henry! This crazy Mendoza had done that to you. I´ve been afraid _for_ you, not _of_ you, Henry! And that´s what constricts my throat. Even now when I think back on it. Because if I would have lost you...what do you believe, how often I´m dreaming of what has happened there!"

Sometimes she woke up amidst the night, being covered in sweat, when the pictures came up... But of this she had neither talked to Mike nor to Henry.

"You haven´t been there, Vicki, when he did all this to me!"

"No! I haven´t been there! Because...would I have been there, then I´d have beaten that badass up and you would..." she replied defiantly. Her voice had gotten that angry tone again and her heartbeat was speeding up, what he could hear.

"You don´t know Mendoza, Vicki! I know...I knew him since centuries! Would he have gotten his hands on you earlier...before he had intended you as food for me...then you would have must to watch him torturing me! Only to break me and you! Vicki, you know the Inquisition only by your history classes! But I´ve lived through it! I´ve lost beloved humans by it..." Ginevra. "I have had my...my revenge! Believe me, Vicki! I swear you by the Lord, I´ve taken my revenge! And you won´t want to know, how...!"

He had, after the death of his beloved Ginevra in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, started a personal war of extermination from Venice through half of Italy. He had wreaked massacres among the Dominican, Jesuits and Benedictines, had raged among them like the incarnated death...

Henry knew how tough Vicki was and how fierce. But being forced to watch it, when Mendoza tortured him, would even have made her breaking down. In the Inquisition it had been common practice to force captives to witness tortures, to break their resistance and to get to confessions.

"Henry, I...I don´t know what I would have done, when I would have lost you! What I´d have done with Mike..." She hesitated, not pushing the thought forwardly.

Instead, another fact came to her mind.

Mike! Heaven she had forgotten Mike, who probably was sitting around in the bedroom in a pissed off mood, wrapped in Henry´s second dressing gown and stewing in his own juice, because it took so long until Coreen would show up to get his keys.

"Henry! I have to call Coreen! Otherwise Mike will shredder me midair!"

She fumbled for her cellphone in the pocket of her jeans, pulled it out and freed herself from Henry for dialing. Henry could hear the ringing. Typically Vicki! She always managed it again, to get abruptly away from uncomfortable conversations by suddenly pulling up another important business out of nowhere!

Henry made no effort to hide his frustration about it, let go Vicki´s free arm and turned around with an audible sigh of resignation. Angrily he went back into the bedroom.

Mike looked up, when the door was opened.

Fitzroy looked angrily, frustrated. Without caring about him, the vampire moved over to the other bedside, where clothing was lying on the comforter. Henry pulled on a Jeans, a T-shirt and a hoodie sweater.

"What´s going on, Fitzroy?" Mike asked from his side. He didn´t seriously expect an answer, when he watched Henry dressing and taking his cellphone from the nightstand.

"I´m looking for something to feed. You can stay here so long. Vicki calls Coreen to get you fresh clothes. At sunrise I want to be alone!"

Henry threw look at Mike, which showed him that anything was wrong.

"Has Vicki...has she dealt with you, Fitzroy, like she always does with me?!" Anywhere he felt the thorn of secret malice that the vampire hadn´t met it better than him, but on the other hand... For a moment he thought back to the intimacy under the shower and swallowed down a biting comment. To place themselves on the same level with each other, might the bastard cause to make the wrong conclusion, that he, Mike was feeling attracted to him.

For heaven´s sake! He was hetero!

But the vampire had completed him in every way possible.

When Fitzroy had been ready with him, he had been ready. Down and finished.

"I´m hungry. Detective."

What meant; don´t keep me off furthermore, Mike thought. So you didn´t get satisfied before while that quickie.

Henry got himself his coat, then he hurried out of his home, without taking care of Mike anymore, who was watching when the door fell shut. With a sigh he shoved his arm under his head and let himself sink into the next best cushion.

Greg saw Henry coming out of the elevator and before he could open the doors for him, Henry passed through them himself and was abreast the reception desk.

"Good evening, Mr. Fitzroy! Shall I deliver any messag..."

"Thanks. Not necessary!" Henry grumbled and hurried out without so much as turning around to the doorman.

"...any message, if anybody is asking for you..." Greg soundlessly finished the sentence in a grumbling tone and looked after Henry with a shake of his head. "Has already been in a better mood..." he mumbled and turned back to his Ice Hockey results in the Toronto Star. Normally his tenant from the fourteenth floor had always a smile and some kind words for him, when he came or went. Even when he was in a hurry.

The Maple Leafs weren´t even an edification today.

Henry started the Jaguar, steering his car into the traffic and despite the fine snow grains he didn´t need long until he reached a large club down in King Street.

Inside was an intense activity and the poor light of disco lights and small lamps was, what he preferred right now. The mostly very young audience was already on its own level of excitement and alcohol at this late hour. Some of them had been withdrawing to the small tables in the niches to take a pause after hours of dancing. Silently smirking Henry noticed a pair of slim women´s feet, which were stretching out under a table after her owner had slipped out of her narrow high heels. Here in the semidarkness she thought, that nobody might notice it, that she had been separating from her shoes, to allow her hurting feet some recovery time, before she would dance again.

The young woman, barely grown out of teenage...at all one had to be at least twenty one years old to drink alcohol or even enter a club with liquor license...was sitting alone at the table, with a bottle of Cola and two of these flat, stemmed cocktail bowls standing in front of her. She sighed low when she grabbed under the table to knead her ankle between her fingers.

"Did you contort your ankle?" Henry asked in a concerned tone and directed to the high heels.

"What? Uh, oh no!" She looked up astonished and pulled her hand back fast, well aware, that being a kid she was told not to put off her shoes in public or while a visit. Her feet were searching for the shoes what wasn´t that easy without looking for them.

"Then I may suggest, that these shoes are new ones and not worn in comfortably. The old known problem. I hope you didn´t cause you a blister...then you shouldn´t slip off the shoes under any circumstances, because you won´t get in back again that easily..." he replied with a slight smile.

"Oh no! That things had been very expensive and now my feet are hurting a bit. There you may invest as much as you want, in the shop they fit well and when you have been dancing...typically for new shoes..." she sighed with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Can I get you some drink? Cola? Cocktail?..." Henry offered. "I would like to invite you for a drink, Miss..."

"Casparo. Antonia Casparo. Also simply Tonia..." she smiled, discretely knocking with her fingers onto the seat beside her. A sign that Henry wasn´t unwelcome to her.

"So, Tonia...what can I get you?"

"A mineral water first. It´s terrible warm in here and I´ve been dancing..." She stroked a curl back from her forehead. This young woman came just right in time, her honestly impartiality was warding off his suppressed mood a bit and Henry decided to spend some of his time with her. She was young and her scent told him that she didn´t smoke and was healthy. Two cocktails and her wish for mineral water were indicating, that she had a healthy relation to drinks and the needs of her body. At all possibly a good occasion to get to a snack and to satisfy the rumbling of the animal in his veins.

"I´ll get us something..." Henry smiled at her and turned over to the bar. After a moment he was back with two glasses and some mineral water. He sat down beside the woman and poured them the water.

"Alone in here for dancing...?" Henry asked and his smile didn´t look intrusively but simply disarming.

"I´ve come with my girlfriend, but she had to go a while ago, cuz she has a job too..." she smiled. "I´m still not up for leaving..."

So he won´t come into danger that suddenly her friend or her husband would be showing up at the table and the situation might become uncomfortable. Henry relaxed a bit inwardly and leaned back. Tonia sipped at her glass, smiling at him. She had put on a lipstick of a restrained color and her fawn brown eyes were equivalent the to her full, dark brown curls.

"Sorrows...?" she hawed when she studied his face.

"My day hadn´t been running that well and I came over here now, to switch off a bit..." Henry replied in a low voice and looked at her: "...to free the mind, as it´s usually called..." his hand moved up to the backrest, behind her back. She seemed to notice it but didn´t draw aside.

Not that bad sign, he thought. But slowly. Eventually he didn´t want to shoo her away.

"To free the mind! Sounds good. What´s your name at all? I won´t like _Mister_ in a talk so much..." she slightly smirked.

"Henry. Henry Fitzroy..." he introduced himself to her.

"Henry. That sounds anyway...noble. Like an English Lord or king..."

"Do you think so?" Henry stroked with his fingers softly over her curls, that were lying on the backrest. Inwardly he had to smile. You don´t even know what you´re talking about. And to whom...

"I might be able to help you with getting your head free, Henry..." her voice was low and a hint of promise was swinging in it, when she whispered. "And possibly a bit more, if you´d like..." She was talking in such a low voice that only Henry could hear it and he felt, when the vampire in him was struggling to come up from under the surface. And more...

The quickie with Mike had been surprisingly good, his unexpected surrender. But it had woken the hunger for more, particularly as he had...when it came to the blood...kept himself back consciously with Mike. Shortly ago Mike had lost more blood than one could call healthy, even in such a tall and healthy man.

His hunger hadn´t been sated now and Henry felt the urge, not only to feed, what his body would need. But he had the urge not only to drown his tensed and suppressed mood in blood tonight, but his body longed for more...

**Annotation**: This is the end of _**Myxine- What the hell is that?**_

But it´s not the end of his personal story for Henry Fitzroy, as T_**here´s sometimes more than you´re expecting **_which is the second story of a series I started and that takes place during the first and the second season of Blood Ties... You will find it in the crossover department of this forum: Blood Ties/Moonlight


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